Tex-Pat Diaries

2012-01-20T22:49:00.000-05:00

the theme of my life, should be the gossamer threads of the garden.
I should only be so lucky, to follow just these and the life of the forests around me, each and every day.

2012-01-20T22:46:00.000-05:00

Just give me.. 10 minutes of mercy. 10 seconds would be fine.

The truck misses my dad.

He has a story to tell, and he tells us.

It would just take 10 minutes, or seconds, of mercy.

We did not get them. He did not get any mercy, none whatsoever, this gentle man.

Only what I had the staff show him, in pain relief. Our ministrations, my brother and I, just broke his heart. The hours I spent with my own body holding him down, in sad and gentle combat, as he tried to break his broken body free, and I told him there was no way out but up..

We had four days of some kind of mix of mercy and torment.

I would have given all that

for 10 minutes of mercy. 10 minutes of conversation.

At the same time, we got to let him go ourselves.

If you have to go, and we all do, let the ones you love hold you.

let them play you music and love you.

there isn't a good way.

But there also isn't a better way.

If it's time to go.

I cannot change time.

I cannot change fate.

I can step into the shoes that fit me, and keep walking.

I may quake, I may shiver, I may be terrified and my heart may be broken beyond repair.

I will come back from it, I will persevere through the tears.

Dad won't tolerate our deep depths of depression, he'll play a joke or sport a license plate.

Literally, he has made fun beyond the grave for us.

who else would cause "smelly" to be on a Volkswagen in front of us, telling fart jokes in our uncle's Suburban in traffic. Who else would cause the random to play "rock steady" A Real Love Survives as I am crashing into tears.

And then play Driven to Tears.

Which my random player just did.

Sometimes you have to listen to fate, and its messages.

2012-01-12T22:06:00.000-05:00

it's with earthquake shivers, I look at my fate this eve.

"My mistakes, brought me to this place, where the flowers
replace the thorns. "
(Sarah Hickman)

My brother and I have been through this odyssey with our father, and we aren't done yet, and he has, in his Pyhrric nature, given us both a way to our dreams.

In all of the additions and subtractions of fate, both of us, would just rather have our Dad, back close at hand. But he is gone, struck by a broad, gross hand, which would ask more than his simple death.

The flowers do not entirely replace the thorns.
Our Dad would have us work to our utmost, to find a way to improve ourselves.

Our Dad was a blue collar man, and I, for my own work, follow his path on a slightly more sophisticated way. I keep people working, despite their pain.

Our Dad was the son of new money aristocrats, and took the path of a laborer when he married our mother, and needed to keep a kind of family income with the US Post Office.

The awards he got, in the beginning, were abundant.
They got tired of him trying to shift the dominant paradigm.

If you don't have people in position, you can't do a thing.
This year, especially.

2012-01-12T21:36:00.000-05:00

When I got to East Texas, a long desperate drive after a tolerable flight..

I knew I was walking into hell, at the Tyler Emergency Center.

This is another story, but I walked into hell, fully armed by our father, and ready for battle.

I can't imagine what kind of knuckle-dragging hell they took our dad into, in Palestine Regional, where they refused to give up his personal effects until I had made contact with the regional director, and made sure they knew that I had done that.

The money in my dead father's wallet, was bait enough, to make staff lie.

It wasn't a lot of money, not over three digits.

They were sure that a few lies and fibs, would pay off for them.

It took conversations, and texts with their Director, for me to walk in and get my father's effects.

As would any sentient, emotional person, I fell apart completely upon laying my hands on the belt, wallet, glasses and familiar scent and things of my paternal.. the staff had the grace to do the same.

I had the presence of mind to call into consciousness for them, my father's presence, hold my hand up to their startled eyes, and say, yes, he is here, and you must feel him.

Of course I do, because the engrams of our loved ones are engraved upon our hearts.

Because we, the living, do not know.

But we, the living, must hold those in sacred trust to the dying, to their trust.

What would you steal from the dying man, or his children?

What kind of worthless protoplasm are you, to try to do this?

If you will, will you at least submit to target practice?

Because you are exactly the kind of worthless mutherfucker I would like to cut into slabs.

Come over here, and stand still for a minute..

2012-01-06T22:28:00.002-05:00

They don't let you post. Forget it.

2012-01-06T22:28:00.000-05:00

useless.
You can't post anything, it disappears.

2012-01-06T22:27:00.000-05:00

Blogger totally ate an important post of mine.
Couldn't post it.
Nothing moved.
Useless system.

2012-01-06T22:25:00.002-05:00

Blogger does not save stuff you really care about.

Fuck Blogger.

2011-12-20T00:18:00.000-05:00

This is not the mountaintop, and I am not the first to pioneer this direction.
In any case, I was never interested in it, or anything to do with Zen, status, flatus, or any of the accompanying baggage.

I am not here, to dance circles round the Sun.

I am just here to Train.
My soul is only rewarded by Shugyo, the simple fact of training which brings us all together in the holy communion of sweat and honest effort.

I only seek a venue for this simple expression of soulful effort.
Perhaps the stars, thorns, sparks and thunders of life can find their way into discipline, through our simple efforts.

It seems so astonishingly miraculous to me, that this so old discipline, can give so much to people so far removed from its origin.

In any case, I will glad and proudly take my place on our little Island of Misfit Toys, no one knows us, no one wants us, but if they are paying attention, they may start asking questions.

Now, we are at this point, and for myself, I find the tight, risky, bare trembling of new beginnings right under my hunter's nose.. you stand, or you don't.

When I know it's right, I stand like the steel I know how to sling.
When I know it's wrong, I stand ready to cut without prejudice.

you can't change the world,
you can only change yourself.

Everyone who has lost someone, is living on a great expanse of empty.
We are all searching for equilibrium.

The fact is, that every plus needs a vacuum, and every vacuum needs some kind of positive energy to fill it.

Trust me, I have lost the linchpin of my life, of my brother's life, even more so than my own.
Every emptiness begs something to fill it.

Fill it with what sustains you.
I got a personal trainer who is constantly astonished at my bloodthirsty hunger for the heavier weight. "Yeah, you might want to hand me a heavier weight. Yeah, you might want to hand me a heavier weight.. " I have friends in budo who show up at the house and want to train. We practice one of the most painful forms of jujutsu I have ever had anything to do with.
Training as sempai to a gifted kohei, I give the attack best I can, I know it's going to hurt, and I'm OK with it. In these days, this constructive pain is a gift, it is not a pain of loss, it is a constructive pain, and I will take it, gladly, and I will rebound like something mad and rabid, and walk into the pain again and again, because it is a glad, voluntary, constructive pain, and it takes me away from the wildly deconstructive pain of grief, loss, rage and insanity I am dealing with in my deepest levels of emotional control and management.

The other factor is, that I was raised in insanity, and therefore raised to walk into pain.
So in my life, I resolutely walk into pain
again and again.

So I am rewarded by Shugyo, dancing with pain, and dealing with technology.

My body makes me lame, it makes me slow and not able to express the things I know, the things I have been shown, and I fight it.

In combat with my own balky body, I have found ways to make it work.

I call in colleagues, and I ignore pain.
Pain is my friend, pain is the mindkiller, pain is the motherfucker.
Fuck pain. Pain in the am, pain on walking, pain on stretching, pain on sleeping. Typical heel spur/fasciitis. Victim's fault? oh goodie, that's a lot of help.

I am pain, I work through pain, pain is my friend.
This, when my US colleagues can't resolve it.

I am looking forward to the EU visit, see what the perspective is.

some rationality in a world full of morons.
I did the deep work already, don't ask me again.

2011-12-19T22:54:00.000-05:00

I feel like I'm sitting in a corner, with several ways to go.

The one that leads straight down into despair, is the one I am NOT taking. Dad would be decidedly disapproving, and he has given me so many signs that he is having fun observing and making fun of the living, that I am not so concerned about him, as he may be about me.

Since I got back from Austin, I have been scrupulous about my support.

And yet, I find myself in frequent tears of crisis, and not wanting to burden my mate.
My grief for my father, a tremendous icon in my life, is gone, and my feelings well uncontrollably. I don't want to tell him, all the time, that I miss my dad. It's a constant, not a comment. Chuck knows that. He knows, at least I hope he does, that it's another spear in my heart, one I will never recover from, and having lost loved ones, I just enter a little more solidarity..

In some ways, Dad is more with me, than he was before he was dead. I left Texas over 10 years ago, and have been dealing with his physical absence at least that long. This is of course different from knowing that he is alive and well, and has opinions, and being able to ask about them.
Now, he can sit with me in the kitchen as I cook, I can serve him a drink at his place (the one I am sitting in now) and no one is the wiser, we can nod and smile at one another, depending on how much I have had to drink, or how insane I am feeling, we can have an actual conversation.

My father never understood my budo practice.
And yet, he raised me to be a budoka.

There's your conceptual dichotomy of the day.
For me, it's just practice.

To my delight, I am not alone.

2011-12-15T23:02:00.000-05:00

Horror.. absolute horror..

that is what we entered into, and what we have still not resolved.

What do you do with a man who is too broken to continue.
You let him go.

I'm still living with the horror of the whole procedure, from the lying across his broken breast, listening to ruined lungs, to telling him that there's no way out but UP, to having the staff pull the tubes out, and watching him go.

If anyone has to go like that, someone should hold them.
My brother and I held our dad.

We held him.

He says to me now, Stop crying, I'm okay now.

He doesn't want me to forget that.

And I don't want him to forget, that I'm OK too..
I just miss my Dad..
and I'm still Listening.

2011-11-23T23:04:00.000-05:00

The little pink bandaid on my right index knuckle has a cute design, something for girl-children who know they are girls.

On my rough, working hand, this material has cracked and frayed, just in one short afternoon, after multiple replacements.

I turn my hand over, and I see a powerful yet gracile structure, single-jointed fingers of great sensitivity, frayed cuticles and flattened knuckles from my work. When I am training enough, keels of callus also rise. But not now.

I am a workman, I don the overalls of the Japanese monk or crafter for a reason.

These blunt fingers, this blunt mind, I like to solve problems.

The tracery of scars from bones, to skin and gristle, only helps me understand my subjects better.

My father beat his body to make our living. I have made my life's work, a way for people like him, to not be so trapped in that battle.

I have already done the work I needed to do, to reconcile.
I just did not consciously acknowledge that I was doing it.

I knew I needed to be ready. I just didn't know it would be so soon.
The means still sticks in my heart like a crossbow bolt..

I'm caught in the swirl of events, waiting to land with my own two feet, sharpening my talons for what I need to get them into.

I also have to sort through a multitude of hometown issues.. besides the broken heart and the lost icon and my family..

I have a spine of spring steel, teeth like chipped diamonds, and my heart is Pele's best friend.. I have all the resources to survive this.

It's just the steps I need to take, to really make it count.
That's hard.

2011-11-09T21:14:00.000-05:00

For my brother..
We are in mourning, no way to deny it.

We were both close to, and crazy about our dad.
And he was crazy about us. As a proud father should be.
We are rarely gifted, with a personal relationship with our dear ol' Dad.
We are rare and dearly lucky.

He was taken from us in a particularly brutal and traumatic way, and you took the brunt of it.
The moment you told me "it's bad" and "you need to be here" I knew exactly what I was walking into. I will never forget that Jersey nurse saying "It's pretty rough in there" and me swallowing my horror, and saying "yes, I know" and walking in to be who and what I needed to be, for you, and for Dad.
Nothing else mattered to me, but that I be the powerhouse my heart can give me, from the love of my family.

One of the songs I love, by Guy Forsyth, is "If I was Sick, and I couldn't get Well"
one of the lines was "would you wait with me"
"wings made of needles, crash into the ground"
"would you take a stand.. "
"I would hold you forever, or at least until"
"I would wait with you"

We did take the stand we needed to take.
Dad gave us the legal tools we needed, to do what we needed, for him.

One of the most healing conversations I had with one of my dear clients, an Air Force medic who has been there in far, far worse situations than either you or I can imagine (she cannot attend barbeques), she was so adamant that we had done the right thing, she couldn't repeat it often enough.

"Honey, your mind may play second guess games with you, but never doubt your heart, you did the right thing, you did the best thing, and your daddy is so grateful and proud of you"

Of course I fell apart then, and I fall apart now, but in the company of those who face death and dying in the worst possible times, there is no shame.

I'm lucky, I have spent time in the company of chaos.
I know what it is to lose a good life, in a good cause. Or just to lose a life to stupidity.

Losing a life so close to my own, with the cloud we are still under.. it it always uncertainty that hurts the worst.

I am still waiting, with you.
We have, and we are, the future.

When we have healed, let us fly like he meant us to.

2011-11-02T01:46:00.001-04:00

Posting from Austin, Texas, where I've been since late September.
Our dear ol' Dad was in a drastically terrible auto-tractor/trailer accident on September 27, and my brother and I acted on his living will and directives, and pulled the ventilator on October 1, 2011, and held our dear father as he died.
I'm sure my dad wanted it to be another way, he wanted to be eaten by coyotes, or hogs, or somehow or another to go out on a quieter note.
My biggest regret is that my father's last days were painful, emotionally difficult, and that he was, while intubated, unable to communicate precisely. My brother and I spent every possible waking hour talking to him, guessing for him, reading to him (mostly the 23rd Psalm, I wish I could say he responded well to Thoreau and Bassho, but he didn't) and just being with him.
One of the things my father gave me, through standing up to him, was a kind of fearlessness.
I always knew I would lose him, and I always feared, that I would fall completely apart when I did. I was afraid I would howl like a coyote at the funeral, but our dear cousin Butch and his coy-dog and German Shepherd and I had several good howls, just for fun, and it totally cleared my heart. I was afraid that I would howl for days. I may yet..
I had to be very clear and present for my brother, for the family, and I had to Get Things Done, and there is nothing for the hunter but to have a quarry.
I knew, when I got on that airplane, with the health power of attorney tucked under my arm, that I was going to have to guide my brother and I through the process of letting our father go. I had very clear direction from my father, not just that, but very clear intention, and my only regret is that we waited as long as we did, and subjected to our Dad to that much more pain and privation. The dying suffer for the wants of the living. Our father spend four days in pain and unknowable privation, a proud, independent, fastidious man, unable to do a thing for himself, in incredible pain, unable to communicate, with his children obviously in distress and caring for him, drying his tears, reading to him, holding him (and holding him down, in my case). After I filed the health power of attorney, the staff was very responsive to what I felt and saw as my father's needs. His broken clavicle/scapula was incredibly painful, and after 16 hours of ineffective Lidocaine patches, I got him some Fentanyl, and he was much more comfortable, though headed down the Exit Express..
If the living really want to respect the dying, we need to learn to let them go faster, sooner, and we need to stop being so selfish.
That was what I understood from the trauma staff.. those people live to fix lives, not to prolong pain and suffering. They made it very plain to us, and I said to my brother, "we have been selfish enough" and I took his hands in mine, and we looked into each others' eyes, and I asked him the question I knew I had to ask.. "are you ready".
My brother, sick of suffering, and brave, said "Yes".
I could have never done it, without him.
Ol' Pat played some jokes on us, even on the way out. He is still making himself known, he is giving us gifts and communications.
Dad is our favorite Poltergiest, and we welcome his jokes, tricks, lessons and free and playful spirit.
I am still free, clear and present, but that great vast emptiness that is grief, is such a huge part of my life right now.
My dad would be very proud of our 10-year wedding anniversary, I'm sure he had something planned for it, we had a nice Greek dinner together with Patrick, Megan, and Mombi, and I think he would have been thrilled about that. All he ever wanted, all that made him happy, was to have as much of his family around him at one time, as was possible.
In this event, I'm sure he knows that we have been together more, and bonded more, than his wildest dreams. This extends to our dear Unka Bubba's son P (Taz) and we are talking about what older parents need to do, to leave their children free and clear to care for them, and let souls go as needed. Please go to NOLO.com, and get it done.
The blood on the tracks so far, says that that's the easier path.

2011-09-22T22:42:00.002-04:00

In 1989, I finally made my way into formalized Japanese martial arts training. I was 19.

It was an optimistic year, I had finally gone back to college, and bundled Aikido into my community college semester, against my parent's wishes, telling them it would help me study.

It wasn't easy, I cried a lot inside, I got sick and I had to sit on the side, and I was ill-suited and had a bad attitude and I wore the wrong clothes and had a brown belt someone had given me, which I had bleached white.. I don't remember much else about this semester.

I was stiff, arrogant, stupid and stubborn.

Maybe I still am.
Now, I just know that this doesn't help me learn.

Now that I am not quite over that proverbial hill, but still playing with the young and vital, those young people who show up in your life, who persist and keep the faith with you, and they still consent to play with the broken so that we can all learn something, I am gaining the perspective I saw in the people trained with, back when I was the springy young buck in the equation.

Thanks to some of the best bodywork on the planet, this pile of scratch and dent is still training. The twice separated shoulder is glued back together, thanks to Dr Robert Wagner, friend of my dear friend Cosper Scafidi. He said I would be back to 100% this month, and I had a moment of deep sadness, for a man who could not understand 100 of 500%.
At this point, I give him 85, which is Not Shabby At All!

Dr Robert, and his associate whose name I forget, injected a variety of biological superglues into my ruined left shoulder over a series of three sessions last year.
This year I have vastly greater stability, but in shihonage, and the big kotegaeshi throws, I hold onto that arm like it cost me 1500 bucks, which it did.

The other complicating factor is the cervical disc disease and the bulging disc in my neck, which means that impact of any kind is simply OUT.

I choose to minimize it. I don't reject it, I just find ways to train honestly, and minimize.
I'm going to tell you, not to bang me around.

Most people won't listen, so I mostly don't bother.

Everyone has the responsibility to train with their partners in a compassionate, constructive, and responsible manner. I'm nowhere in the leagues of the people who have written articles on this problem, but I have been in the trenches since 1989, and all I can do is call for awareness.

I can learn, I do learn, and I will never be "shiny" but in the end, I will be the one who has to work the hardest to remember, and pass it on. We are the ones who make the notes, write the books, and have to work hard to remember every move.

You know better, than to ignore the slow ones. At least I hope.
Otherwise, we need to renegotiate.

2011-09-22T21:49:00.001-04:00

a learner in a learning world;
no better place,
no leaner space.
Desire is universal,
detail is not.
Spaces are more common
than
full.

We live in
between
not in
what fills it.

2011-08-12T07:50:00.000-04:00

a cool morning in August.. something I dreamed of back home!
crickets chirp sleepily, a jay creaks, and the cool air is so sweet.

2011-08-11T22:04:00.002-04:00

There is the question of belief.

I don't believe in anything.
I may have the experience of anything.

My life is so open to What Is.

I choose not to limit myself, by Belief.

I don't accept the existing limitations.
I never have, and I never will.

What everyone believes, they're not giving up.

I am not even sure of what I am working on, but I am sure it is within rational grasp..
If it was not, it would not be worth grasping.

If you spend so much of your energy, imagining things, you abdicate reality.

Spend your energy becoming sensitive to what is.

In the words of Emily Dickinson, "to simply live, is so astonishing, that it leaves little room for anything else"

I deeply, and truly live by my namesake's statement, in the times and spaces I have to do so.

I have lived with death in the room.
I have lived with deep uncertainty.

I have lived, in places where I could stay another day, hour, or month, and no more.
I have lived in some of the safest places in the world.

The place I live now, is not one of them, and will never be, due to local wilfullness and stupidity.

We have, can, and will make that place work for us.

2011-08-01T07:33:00.003-04:00

A kerfuffle has emerged, on my father's side of the family, yes, America's worst nightmare, rednecks with a little bit of money.. anyway someone wants to move things around and get buried in the family plot, and my dear old dad, just wants them to ask him for permission.

You know, for those of us NOT concerned with our earthly remains, I can't think of anything worse, anything stupider and more useless, to get filled with wax and formaldehyde, and made up in some kind of hideous "lifelike" Lovecraftian simulacron, nothing would horrify my existential self more.

Take this hard-working, startlingly functional carcass, and first of all, take what other people need. Take my beautiful menisci, which in my late 30s, were described as the menisci of a teenager, despite a lifetime of crazy budo.

Take the corneas and retina of my incredibly well-functioning eyes. Take my taxed liver, give my kidneys to my friend Brad Wye, if it's a match. If it's not, find some kid who needs a second chance.

One of my dad's disappointments, was that, when he reached a certain age (76 this September) he couldn't be an organ donor any more.

I don't have a lot of patience with people who get hung up on useless remains.

Make them useful. Fish, or cut bait.

"Believing in this living, is a hard row to hoe.." (Angel from Montgomery)

I run into these obstinate vendettas, and just shake my head, while understanding my own obstinance within it.

I do believe in living. I believe in contributing to living.

"I'm not ready to make nice, I'm not ready to back down".. (Dixie Chicks)

My mother and I have driven around with this amazing CD in the car, both of us in tears, both of us understanding each other, and both of us wanting to somehow reach beyond the vendettas.

"They say, time heals everything, but I'm still waiting". (Dixie Chicks)

At some point, someone, usually the same 20 percent, who has been giving more all along, has to create a controlling interest.

That said, those in the position to give, are usually the ones who have kept better track of their resources all along. This creates resentment in those, who have not.

I have been there, and I have felt that.

I have also learned, that it was my own fault.

Of course it's hard, when things don't come easy, but little worth having, does.

If you are afraid of work, you are afraid of life.

My teachers taught me that knowledge is transmitted via sweat, and I took it to heart. I have no fear of work, perseverance (shugyo) and even blind exhaustion.

I am older, my endurance is shorter, but I will never stop trying to extend it through simple cardiovascular and weight training. I don't want simple physical limitations to stop my inquiry.

My profession is geared to erasing physical limitations, and I rely on it myself. Granted, since I left Germany, the work I get is not as amazing, but it does still help.. oh, who am I kidding. One hour on my teacher PS's table made me Superwoman, until I fell down a hill six weeks later, and disorganized my pelvis again.

Since then, I just feel like I need to get back to Europe, to get my groove back. Last time I returned to the EU, I just felt like I woke from a bad dream in which I was stuck in the USA..

Bury me not on the high prairie, but take my parts and pieces, give them away. Burn the rest, and bury it under a wild rose-bush.

In my waking hours, my willing time, let me go back to an orderly society, where health care, pension, and security has something like a guarantee, where manual therapy is not a gutter idea, rarely recompensed, looked down on, and shunned..

I'd like to live in a more rational world.

Just sayin'.

2011-07-27T22:08:00.000-04:00

in my private, claustrophobic world, I am in the Bavarian woods, I am open and venturing under the sheltering skies of pines and spruces. I am finding Pfifferlinge, blueberries, cranberries, and stashing them in the freezer for future use..

I am the beloved daughter of Bavaria, making use of her wares, I am protected and secure.
The grandmothers and fathers of Bavaria, love me and protect me, I am doing their work.

Then, I hit the epic fail that is the American public land use not-a-system.

Part of the reason I have not been out in the Appalachians, has been lack of a mentor, lack of time, lack of.. just lack of initiative.

I know it's a rich environment, I know it's all there.. and I know that I have clients who literally cry when I can't see them.

This is why I need retreats like our dear Young's place up in the 'Dacks'.
I can do a few sessions on that beautiful deck on Canada Lake, just for the sheer joy of the place. But I need to rest, sketch, sail, canoe, kayak and have a life, too.

I love to hear the loons in the morning, I grew up knowing there were loons, and always wanted to hear them. I always wanted to wear a sweater in the evening. It's the fantasy of every native Texan, and part of the reason I approach any part of Bush citizenship in TX as total fiction: they could always retreat to Martha's Vineyard in the heat of summer.
The rest of us were stuck in three-digit hell, from late May through October.

No Texan worth their salt, balls, or bones, dodged each and every Texas summer. I only dodged a week or so of my last few, and weathered many of them without aircon.

At some point, I would just go mad, and refuse to spend the weekend in Bastrop County.
I went into town and hit the swimming holes Deep Eddy and Barton Springs, swimming laps until I cooled down, or go with family and friends to whatever was fun and cool.

End of August, I was half-mad or more and grumpy, my hair was falling out, and I was just a little further on my way to psychotic.

This acting-out found its way into, fortunately, many constructive activities, which led me into my escape from the clay oven, which is the Texas major season.

I escaped from many other things, at the same time.

I also became beholden, to things I am still trying to understand.

2011-07-22T23:11:00.000-04:00

I have to take it back to the beginning, an American in a spare room in Munich.

I was there on a skinny slip of fate, my terrified Texan self adrift in a Schwabing penthouse.
A little kid was yelling at me one evening as I dragged my bike into the back parking area, about cats getting in, pissing and stinking up the place. He was about 7-8 years old, and incredibly articulate. I knew exactly what he was saying, but had neither the skill nor the vocabulary to reply.
I developed that later.
He had no idea that I was a stupid American, and while I understood about the cats, I had no idea about how the doors or anything else worked, other than getting in, locking up my recalcitrant bike, and getting up a thousand flights of stairs to study in my rented room.
This kid was the son of my future Rolfing teacher, Peter Schwind.

Of course I had no idea, and the kid had no idea, that anyone didn't speak German.

The fates laugh at me now, but I was occupying a spare room in the same building as my eventual, most influential teacher.

I met the ambassador from Brazil to Germany, in my very best pajamas.
I was studying, and my hostess insisted that I come out and meet the fellow. He suffered from hirsutism, and was one of the most elegant humans I have ever had the honor to meet. He made me feel like royalty, in my PJs, whilst on a visit to his cultural teacher, in another country. Seriously, that's chops.

That's what I miss, here.. that kind of elegance.
That, and the grainy practicality I grew up with.

I am literally between the devil and the deep blue sea.
Life is suspended animation here.. some kind of halfway point.

Who knows, what the resolution will be. Not me.
I can guess.. I may well seek asylum, eventually.

2011-07-22T22:19:00.000-04:00

So the adventure continues, and the doors and windows open down the road.

Friends are continuing their lives together, and I am searching my heart, to find things to share with them.

You already know, that you must risk everything for love.

No one can tell you who to love, when, how, what or why.
Love finds its own way, and it is up to us, to plumb its mysteries.

Just because we love one person, does not mean that we can't love anyone else.
In fact, the best love is commutative, it links up, and joins people together.

I love so many people, sometimes it just boggles my mind.
I am not sure, how I can make room in my heart for all of them.. and then, I realize, that my love, makes more room in my heart.

My heart can always expand, it can make room for more loved ones.
This is a bigger heart, it is a better heart, and more love, and more to love, just makes my life better, bigger, and gives me more ways to grow.

So I choose, to live by love.

2011-06-24T22:25:00.001-04:00

So we had a jujutsu class yesterday.

There was some kind of mutual respect, some kind of understanding, and eventually, a real meeting of mind and intention.

Someone with the compassion, skills, intellect and depth, to grasp what my teacher is trying to do.

It was one of the most fun training sessions I have ever had the privilege to participate in.

Honestly, I am pretty verklempt about just getting back into jujutsu at all, but with this particular person, I am really having to reach into my roots, to keep my center as anything like a sempai. Fortunately, my motto has always been "don't do as I do, do better than me" and everyone always has.

It's not my main talent, my gift and leaning is with weapons.
However, with my understanding of the body, my interest in jujutsu is persistent. I just need people to train with, who understand that years of indiscriminate training has damaged me, and I can only participate in a very specific, discriminate way.

The class left me unharmed, invigorated, and very, very happy.
I am happy to say, it did the same for our new student, who is also our teacher, in another paradigm.

I am not sure how it all ended up here, but I am just so grateful for a chance to get back to some real basics, and this exploration of the principles of martial movement, in this particular paradigm, that I don't even care that we get up before the sun does, to do it.

2011-06-18T00:09:00.001-04:00

I'm a bit lost in space, in terms of my martial arts career.
I'm unhappy about not pursuing Kokoro Ryu, but am really enjoying SMR and the people we train with.

Neither of us know how much of it we can still do, but neither of us has really ever asked the question, physically, either. I have continually worked to improve.

I can't remember enough Kokoro Ryu, to do it justice. Other students have better memories, and more talent. I mentored them, but I can't do it by myself.

SMR is probably the more comprehensive, understood and acceptable path. Not my usual thing, but the signs are all good and easy, and I find myself leaping though steps most often hallmarked by hesitation.

When my teacher puts the research he so frequently talks about, into action, and finds out what he was taught, and does something with it, that will be interesting.

The path is hard, narrow, and without reward. But it is the path, and it will guide the seeking soul who beats and follows its way along, with curiosity.

I shall Remain Curious.

2011-06-12T21:10:00.005-04:00

It's been a week I would have sold my soul for, back in Texas.
Days breezy, highs in the 80s.
Nights breezy, sometimes stormy with rain, worrying about managing overflowing rain barrels.

Nights with fans, just out of sheer indulgence.
Sleeping under a light down comforter.. in later June.

In my old Texas life, an unaffordable luxury. My waterbed unheated, a cold shower with mint soap, going to sleep under the highest ceiling fan speed possible.

Yeah, life is different.

Shadows rise up again, and again, and many times they are just echoes I should learn to develop some kind of iron equanamity for.

They say that when the student is ready, a teacher shall appear.
This is not my exact experience.
My experience is that the avid student must scare teachers out of the woodwork, seek them out, bend their life to the teachers', and just generally make it work.

Woody Allen was right.
80% of life, is just showing up.

2011-06-12T21:07:00.000-04:00

I am such an unimaginably lucky girl.

At the beginning of my life, I was so hungry, so in search of something.

I was not in any position to understand my own quest.

I was Ronin, I was a starving coyote, I was raw bones, sinew, and attitude.

One man took me on, he took me in hand, and polished my raw aggression against his own compassion. Another of my teachers knew him, and handed me over, like some kind of hot brick or other liability.

Brendan took me on, took me as a student, and took it into his head to civilize me.

He took the wild live steel that was me, for a year or more, nights after practice, bounced me around the mat, Sanshiro-Sugata style, dragging my ragged self around, and off, the mat, with never an ounce of pain, harm, or damage. It was like being in a moon bounce, with a friend who helps you bounce, and get up again, except that your brain cells will never be the same. At some point, you have to let them know, that you can't play anymore.
That was the point I really had to re-evaluate my own heart.
Because, up to now, no one could break me.
Now, I am broken. It was an accident.
It was many accidents..
I can't do what I did, I can't be who I am.
I have to live in this curious half-life.
I am not here.
I am not there.
Three feet of steel, is my heart, it is my existence.

Three feet of steel, four feet of oak.
The singer sings, I am stung between bitter, nasty cultures.. one, I kill you, other, I kill you another way.
My heart is broken, that I must kill anyone, anyway. It's not my way, or my wishes.

The solution, is obscure.

There is nothing, there is no way. We like nothing.
We survive.

2011-06-12T20:52:00.000-04:00

2011-05-20T23:48:00.001-04:00

I can't change the world.. I can change my Self..

yeah that's me..

I'm sitting here with a glass of ouzo and three feet of rusty, battered steel.

I handed it over to one of the first Westerners to end up in Japan, learning budo. Mortified about the condition of the blade, and the sageo.. I got it back without a single extra shaving in the saya, and shook it out, before I cleaned it, utterly embarrassed.. I cleaned it, and bought a new sageo, just so discomfited that my little indulgence had become the instrument of a great teacher.. too late as usual.

The bones of my hands are dented, you can feel the lumps.

The veins are broken, where they got hit, again and again. My knuckles are deformed from trying to punch a horse, who ran into me. My body is deformed, and I need help, to not walk in circles.

My neck is a neurological experiment, my left shoulder has been ripped up twice, and glued back together in three sessions of needle hell. The last one, they drew my own blood, spun out the fibrinogens, and shot it back into me, at the hands of a slender young man, who apologized, and told my husband I was "tough as nails" without ever understanding that the man I love understands toughness on a scale not often comprehended by the living.

I appreciated the sentiment, and live forever in the shadow of Chuck's perspective, of a simple dumb needle in the shoulder compared to the Mumford, a hip replacement, and everything that ever happened to our military sistren &; brethren. So I got a 3-inch needle in my shoulder. I asked for it. I wanted it. That's different.

I kill varmints without fear or regret.

So that's my life, amongst the animals.

There's not much I need.

I need a garden. I need some meat.. can grow, trade or hunt.

I need to work, I need to do my work. I need to make my way, doing this Work. It is bigger than I am, like my training. I went looking for things bigger than me, and boy howdy did I find them.

I need to train. I need a budo, I need a Way. I need something to do with my Self and my Intention.

There is always some kind of negotiation.

I must train, but I must also not incur any more damage.

I cannot tell you, what the new day feels like, but it feels pretty gottamn good to a grrrl who has been looking for her kind of heaven for half a decade, since her teacher lost his groove for good.

I am here, because I spent 20 years on things which did not suit me. and 10 on those that did, but did not survive.

I am here, to work on something that survives.

2011-05-09T23:18:00.000-04:00

Coming up on a weekend of intense training, I find myself in focus.

Not so many words, many experimentations in my own attitude.

I have been doing budo since I was 19 years old. I wanted to study when I was about 13, but my parents just laughed at me. In any case, good teachers of classical arts, were in short supply in Austin, TX when I was 13.
I will be 43 this year (2011). The Japanese sword was, and has always been, my first love (after lightsabers of course).

My study of SMR Jodo, is to me, like a study of the opposition. It's a fond, interested study, and I love the depth and range of the art. Like Heinlein, I believe that specialization, is for insects.
If I had not met the people I have met, who were also interested in this art involving four feet of oak dowel, I might not have found such an interest.
Interesting people, generate interest.

I know that my own presence, as a native sword devotee, improves the practice of the poor sods stuck with me.

I have spent my entire adult life, studying three-foot razor blades, and various types of physical conflict.

In all honesty, it has made me a far more chilled-out person, than many who have not explored the concept in the depths I have.

There is no place, like the training place.
Three feet of razor steel, hone a person to a place of simple honesty, simply because of the difficulty of properly using the instrument.

If you are in the right place, all movements are both bold and minimal.
There are no gestures.. no movement means nothing.
Everything is culturally, ryuha, family, group correct.
There are no individual movements.
Everything you do, every movement you make, tells people who your influences are.
Everything else is an accident, until you make it Work.
Shu.
Ha.
Ri.

This is Japanese Budo.
It is a puzzle, for the Westerner, of embodiment.
To become so completely spacious and empty, to embody this culture so far from our own, in everything from language, to culture, to strategy, requires an effort from the practicioner, which much come from their very soul.
This is, if I understand, true of native Japanese, as well.

For myself, orphaned on several different continental areas at once, I shall strive for curiosity.
That is the lesson I am carrying with me, along with as much empty space as I can bring with me, to learn more.

2011-04-15T23:06:00.000-04:00

in the arms of the angels, fly away from here.

Wish I could.
Wish we could.

Thanks Sarah, most of what I find in comfort here, is your voice, and friends who think like you do.

The best I can do is..

bring the reality I knew..
to the reality I am now trying to overcome.

I would rather be in the arms of your angels.. but they don't come around here..

My reveries involve silence and enlightenment, few and far between.

Even my strategies in Texas, were easier to deal with.
Now, I just have to work on me.. I can't blame it on anything but me.

2011-03-26T23:25:00.000-04:00

As a budoka, these days, most of my thoughts appear to me, to be in past tense. I live in a cultural maelstrom of past, recent past, and more recent, so it's all blurry, at best.

It's not that I am no longer doing budo.
I just feel like I am.. at some kind of halfhearted neutral right now.

This grrl used to show up for 3-6 days a week of mat pounding and abuse, and I picked on the instructors intentionally, to make it worse. If I could move after class, I was disappointed.
The instructor I mention later, used to mop the floor with me for at least 30 minutes after class twice a week, if I was lucky. I showed up at 4:30, he showed up at 8:30. I trained straight through. This is aikido and judo training, not a lot of standing around, generally.
I really thought I could get him, once or twice. I landed on his head once. He thought that was pretty funny (so did I).

Don't get me wrong, I am enjoying Shinto Muso Ryu.

It's just that..
A few weeks ago, Chuck and I did something from Kokoro Ryu, and I trained on that level, for the rest of the evening. Pat, ever alert, cranked it up for me.. and we ended up negotiating.. I don't know how to tell these guys who I am and how I roll, without making an ass of myself. After almost two years, and we have all been working so hard on trusting one another, and I do love the jodo boyz, but still there is something that needs to get kicked over, to get to the level of training we all need.

To their credit, they are figuring me out, they are testing me, ever so gently, but always asking for more, which I could not be more flattered by.
But I am guilty of hanging back, I am guilty of not pressing forward.

Because of who I have trained with, and who I am, quite simply, I am always operating with the kid gloves on. I understand that we all do that, for one another, it's just the trick of finding that terribly scary, sweet sweet spot, where we can scare the crap out of each other, trust each other, and we drive each other to that Higher Ground.

I had a long, sweet, deep conversation with the person I consider my closest original teacher for aikido and judo.. the bond we have is truly incredible. There are not many people I will tell my troubles to, he is one, and we always have a laugh, however rueful. Regardless of anything, he will always be a touchstone for me, simply for the honestly of his approach.
I have literally placed my life in this person's hands, with the manic sincerity of my attacks. The only other person I have done that with, is the man I married, but we haven't trained for the last three years.

Our conversation made me realize, that I need to get to this level, with anyone I train with, for any kind of intensity.

I need real intent. I need real salvation.
I need for the people I train with, to really know what they are doing, to really trust their technique, to save them from a minor wacko like me. I can stop anything, I am a technical expert, but I need training to bring be beyond that, and through it.

I need people who are going to stop me, and say, If you really want to kill me, you will do it This way.. they will also express their expectations of control.

Because those are the people who really love you, and those are the people who really trust themselves and their technique.

Those are the people I need to train with.
I train with liberated men, who don't give me unnecessary breaks.
I would hate them, if they did.

I am going to go ahead and say it.

Women in martial arts, are mostly women on their own.
We are annoyed by the limitations imposed on our gender, in general.
We don't have time, or interest, in the opinions of small-minded people, about what we are capable of. It's not any of your business, so leave it alone.

We will do what we want, and there is nothing you can do, about it.
We can, we will, and we are able.
You may not be.
That's your problem.
'Nuff Said.

2011-01-27T23:22:00.000-05:00

Hold on, hold on to yourself
For this is gonna hurt like hell
Hold on, hold on to yourself
you know that only time will tell
what is it in me that refuses to believe..

this isn't easier than the real thing..
My love for you is strong and true..
Am I in heaven here, or am I..
at the crossroads I am standing..
and now your're sleeping peaceful, i lie awake and pray
that you'll be strong tomorrow,
and you'll see another day and we will praise it.
and love the fate that brings another smile across your face..

2011-01-17T23:21:00.000-05:00

The nitty-gritty becomes comical..
I am darting down the alleyway to get a license number of a car engaged in truly odd suspicious behavior at the criminabe's.. it's snowing, I've got my snow boots on and am in my warmups, basically my PJs, otherwise. I greeted a suspicious character on the porch, and ran around the back to catch the license plate number.
The good neighbors called me after I got back, sort of to compliment me on my nimble sprint down the alley.
We keep trying to tell them.. who we are and what we do.. but it took my little trot down the alley, to see that this middle-aged chickie can move a bit. Granted, I'm in bodywork for a reason, and I was so beat-up at age 30, that I was Jackie Chan in the morning, cracking and creaking to the bathroom.
Now, thanks to the bodywork I've gotten involved with, I can get up cold, and trot out in the snow to check a license tag, and just worry that I might slip around the corner (which I took like Scooby-Doo on meth) and the neighbors are wondering what the hell.
Well, we keep trying to tell them, and old Possum Whacker has made it up out of the basement, to find a place amongst the possible whacking implements.
Meanwhile I am skidding on my snow boots around the corner, memorizing a plate and writing it down on the top of a local Chinese menu card..
The basics of this kind of thing are so very basic, that it just makes me laugh in a rueful kind of way, and not mind getting out on a snowy night, because our neighborhood flatfoots are out in it all the time.
Having Possum Whacker out comforts me, in a way.. that thing was so indestructible, through so many varmints, I am comforted to have it in my hands again. Three feet of battered, warped red oak, in the shape of the Japanese sword, bought in 1985.. almost a quarter century ago.
Possum Whacker was my weapon of choice against the legion of opossums who raided our compost and our chicken coop, back in Texas.
I came up with a "two-stroke" system with the warped, battered wooden sword after my trusty Marlin 22 failed to kill a particularly recalcitrant "Possum" after 7 shots into its furry body, and I had to do it in with butt-strokes from same 22, as it charged me.

I learned to walk up to the offending marsupial in a kind of wake-game, edge ever closer, and go from a brief hasso-gamae to two snap strikes: One to the neck, the second to the skull. This double-tap immobilized the animal, and allowed for the only strike capable of killing these prehistoric critters.
I've got nothing personal against them, it's just that they threatened our personal economy. As long as they didn't transgress, they were safe.
If they did, and I caught them, they were dead.
Pretty simple equation.. one I still live by. As much as Maryland allows.

I was awarded a "Hard Bastard" by the late Bill Mears, for this.
Not sure why, but I do drink a toast to the late, great Bill every time this story comes up.

2010-12-28T20:39:00.000-05:00

Things get darker, and lighter.

Sometimes my flashbacks take me over entirely.
I spent last night in a cat and mouse with some kind of sentient interdimensional catfish, chasing through water, mountains, halls and sky. All four of my limbs were alternately cramping and going numb, as I tried to set them into and out of the covers. It was an incredibly uncomfortable, painful night.
It's a wonder I feel rested at all today, but I am curiously intrigued.

Many times, I am not sure where I am from, or where I am going.

This is a rare admission of the personal dislocation I live in.
Sometimes, if I seem a little disoriented, just keep in mind, that I am not entirely sure where I am from to begin with. Besides a part of Texas, that does not belong in Texas.

Sometimes there's a lot of ugly, sometimes a lot of beautiful.

When you decide to take the high ground, there's a lot of people think it belongs to them already.

People like me, little people with big ideas and big hearts, we end up cannon fodder, if we aren't smart about it. We end up diving into the meat grinder, with good intentions.

I so often feel like some kind of space alien, with knowledge from another planet, looking for a leader to talk to.

I have yet to find a rational group with something resembling national leverage.
There are so many divisions, so many delusions, so many different directions.

I feel the same way, in my personal life, but then I always have.
America's idea is that you sell out, to get by.
I have managed to get by without selling out, but I also work my ass off.

I have found the limit, and I have found the wall.
Perhaps I can forge it a little deeper, but this level of influence, is not enough for me.

I change things, life by life, but I would like a more organizational approach.

I am not satisfied, by any means, by any organization I currently belong to, though I am encouraged.

What the hell do I do with that..

2010-12-16T17:51:00.000-05:00

The cold and snow, and listening to KGSR online, sends me into Time Travel mode.
Cold nights in Austin, Texas, are few and far between, and the times we all spent shivering and talking by our cars, are few and far between, but memorable.

I remember showing up at 5:30 pm Aikido class for special study with Jim P, working through the beginner's class, working through the Advanced class, and then Brendan taking me on for a good 30-45 minutes after that.

I walked into that building full of butterflies, taming them in the ritual of dressing for class and warming up, and then facing them again and again, as my teachers tested, and re-tested me.

I will never forget the rampant butterflies in my stomach, as I got into the elevator of the Belmont gym. I also remember the ritual of dressing, and warming up, bringing me to my center.

I also remember quickly re-dressing and recovering, to my regular shirt or sweater, hakama, and cowboy boots, just to save time. I drove home so often, in that outfit.

I am feeling that sense of exhaustion, satisfaction, and SEEK mode in a cooling body, dressed in this wack cultural rift, dealing with everything I was learning, all the shifts I undertook, with those boots on my feet, the hakama round my waist, and some random thing around my shoulders. I just walked out and drove home like that, figuring that no one would know the difference.

They never did.. but I miss that sensation of learning and transition..

I miss needing to wear cowboy boots with my hakama.

I miss really training with intensity and intent, on a regular basis.

I intend to do something about that.

2010-11-11T21:33:00.002-05:00

The lower education level in America, particularly for Rolfers, is something which hits very close to home for me.. as a person who struggled for a college degree, and was never able to make it, for economic reasons.. finally my training in Europe, with the ERA and with Peter and Christoph's group, and the Supervision with you where I had fortunately already read all of your material, your research, and could follow it all auf Deutsch, I finally felt like I was on a course of study I could keep up with, and that mattered to me.
I was also finally able to afford it, thanks to a new life situation.

I will be pursuing the study of nerves via Barral, as this seems to be the next big breakthrough in manual therapies, and something I can do and study with little damage to my body.
Finally in 2007, I separated my left shoulder again, in aikido training (which I have since given up, with great mourning), and my body was in crisis for another year and a half, and I went into the Advanced training here on the East Coast of the US with Tessy Brungardt and Jane Harrington.. I made friends with Tessy early, but Jane and I had to negotiate (we are so much alike) but we all came out crazy about each other, and Cosper Scafidi audited the class, and we are now very good friends- there is a real resonance there, with this brilliant, slightly crazy individual. Cosper had us to his home, cooked for us, and made sure we felt "gemuetlich" which Cosper does in a very special way.
He also introduced me to a prolotherapy doctor, who has done some very effective work repairing my torn AC joint with organic "glue".

The move back to America was a real crisis.. you know we didn't really want to go back, but there was a very important election, and finally our votes were counted.

We both fell apart, and it was the Advanced Training that held me together.. we could not afford it, and sold many of our things to make it happen. I worked very hard, and got an article in the local newspaper.

My body was in real trouble, and my soul was truly displaced and disoriented.
Now I am working on myself as the foundation of a kind of bridge- anything I can do, to bring the wisdom we have so forgotten here, in to our practices in the US, from the heart of Europe, I am interested in doing so. I am working with a dear friend (also an Upledger instructor) to create a space in the rural heartland of the MidAtlantic for studies and adventures in the improvement of the human condition.

I can't make it back to Dear Old Europe nearly as often as I'd like, so I like to leave the light on and the door open, for teachers and colleagues from my "Zweite Heimat".

2010-11-04T23:50:00.001-04:00

Most of the time, I just want to go Home, and quietly walk around..
Just to listen, soak the beauty and uniqueness in..

2010-11-04T22:33:00.000-04:00

A letter from one of my original Aikido teachers, hand written.. telling me about his new kitten.

Listening to Seal, from that time when he was everywhere..

I was training with a group in Near East Austin, one guy who held a kind of study group in his back yard (this was the basis of my early training, talented guys with big back yards), the house always smelling of ginseng and herbal remedies.
I will never forget the smell of that place, and lapse into deep, sweet recollection with the smell of simmering ginseng and ginger.

It was a time of real exploration for me, as I searched for my martial identity.
I remember trying Escrima, so dyslexic that two of my martial arts buddies stood at my front and back, one holding and guiding my arms, the other providing the other side of the contact. Of course I was madly in love with both of them, in that immature, transferred state.
I knew what was going on, I was letting all of this pass through me, and just blissing out on the contact and the experience.

Eventually, and partially through the convulsions of my breakout from Austex, I found my real bliss in classical Japanese martial arts.

The simple truth, of putting the sword in my belt (learning how to tie it) sitting down (learning how to sit) taking it out (learning how to take it out) using it (an endless exercise) and putting it back (my greatest challenge, on so many levels) is one of the best study sets I can approach, to make myself a better person.

Encountering the sounds, scents, and sensations which set me on my way, fill me with tremendous nostalgia for that whole set of experiences, which can never be repeated, and will always be cherished.

I was such a Hometown Girl.. Austin is, and ever will be, my hometown, and any year passing, that I don't go home for the wildflowers in spring, is one that hurts me deeply.

Pulling up my pins and moving on was the single most painful thing I have ever done.
My compass will ever return, to Austin, Texas, though I can't survive in that environment.
Well.. I could.. if I decided I liked that oven heat, and absented myself late Dec-March, deadly cedar season.

But no.. I love Fall, here in the Mid-Atlantic.
I love cool springs, crocuses, cool June nights.

July and August, I can travel (not to Texas) and then there is actually some fall going on by September. They don't really have a handle on hot, here. This year, it got to 106, and that was miserable, with the local humidity, but it ain't no 110, ain't no 115.

I listen to Guy Forsyth's Hometown Boy, with the lines about the bloodsucking metal mosquitoes, the shotguns, the dead kids who wanted to do good, and it all hits me center square. Suzy was my best friend, and I never thought of kissing her, even though she would have liked it.

No, I will never leave my hometown.
Not in my heart.
My body just can't stand it.

But I am not at an end.
Just another, new, strange beginning.

2010-10-30T21:53:00.000-04:00

I'm really homesick for the European Rolfing community.

For one simple thing, we have an ongoing relationship with the manual osteopathic community, that is absolutely outstanding.

I have had very in-depth training, from European osteopaths, who know my teachers, and know what I am capable of, in some very advanced subject matter.

I stand in deep humility of what I have been given, and I also stand in the responsibility of it.

I have been trained in manual thermal diagnosis, which means that my hands are sensitized to inflammation, and the signals of the body, and my ability to interact with the human body is basically changed by my extra sensitivity to it.

Where would you put me, consumer of manual therapeutic modalities, if I can read and palpate galbladder dysfunction, and either perform a gentle manual techique to relieve the problem, or send you back to your GP for more radical treatment if that doesn't work

This is far beyond the purview of 'Massage Therapy" don't you think?

Having paid my dues, under protest, we all ask for sentient review.

2010-10-29T21:21:00.002-04:00

It took one mountain apple for me, and perhaps my feeling is that a handful of wild apples and rose hips can play the temptation of the wild adventure of wisdom and experience for another.

When wisdom is evil, so will I be.
Greece needed both Artemis and Athena.

2010-10-29T21:11:00.002-04:00

I ain't gonna be, baby, a fool no' mo.

I ain't gonna be your fool no 'mo'.

So tired, so tired, bein your slave night & day.

Tryin' so hard, so hard baby, rockin these blues away.

Lawd have mercy.

2010-10-29T21:06:00.000-04:00

Walking into our third year in Frederick, Maryland.

We are voting, we are participating, we are part of the neighborhood (including action against the criminabes and their landlord Tom Heilman, narcissist idiot prince of the Ceresville Mansion, who does nothing while his property dissolves into a wreckage of dog poop, Oxycontin sales, and tenants who spit out windows and off the porch, and cigarettes, thrown out windows and off the porch, right next to us) which is mostly full of decent, hard-working people just looking for the next step up in life.

Why ever did we come back?
We had to. Neither one of us, given any stable bridge to a future in Europe, would have bothered to come back to the US.
However, our vote, as we were actually HERE and our votes had to be COUNTED, as opposed to on a US Army base and absentee vote, counted only "if needed" perhaps got our New Hope into office.

I still think of President Obama as the New Hope.
I thought of young black men dressed in suits and ties, headed to college, instead of the dead man's uniform of "dumbass pants" (if they can see your underwear, they think you want to "catch" in jail, BTW) and ugly hoodies.

I was hoping that his bidding to call the "brothas need to pull your pants up!" was going to echo more than it did.

My father was raised by the black help around his family's house in East Texas, and tells me that he didn't know he was white, until he was about 10 years old. I spent time in the kitchen with Jessie May, his mother's maid, and not with my own grandmother, because she wasn't fond of small children. I sat by the kitchen table on the floor, as she told me stories in an unintelligible local dialect, deeply affected by the snuff she kept in her lip, and possibly lax dental care. I will never forget it, and listen for it sometimes.

My father drove her home once- she never drove, one of her kids always picked her up. We saw the little white, neat house, and the round, healthy children running all around.
It was then that I understood that this woman was a kind of aristocrat in her own culture, because she worked for my grandmother. It was then, that I understood that I was part of a kind of "underclass aristocracy" that is the American blue collar upper class.

So when it comes to black culture, I am deeply at home in it, but somehow mute, unable to interact as effusively as is required. So I am still white and uptight.. until I start to dance.. then the reggae boys ask me out, and the white girls ask me what I am on.

I have this umbilical connection to black culture, and I make a direct point of greeting, personally and politely, everyone I encounter in Frederick.
The black folks who seem surprised, just break my heart. I understand, that there are generations of abuse present, but I mean to reach, at least a little, across them.

My ancestors were Irish, who were also discriminated against, had their only escape in this country.

Now, I feel so sorry for them, that this criminal, dangerous, filthy, antisocial place is what they signed up for.

I have lived in a place where I can walk, dead drunk, into a subway station and end up safely back at my own place, if I maintain those faculties for myself.
I have lived in places, where children can take public transportation safely, to school and back. There are no school buses in Europe or Japan, kids just take the bus or the train, like everyone else, because everyone takes care of them, and the public health system keeps the crazies maintained and restrained.

We will have as good and safe a society, as we are willing to pass laws to maintain.

So far, in the US, we are at Massive Fail.

This criminal, dangerous, filthy, antisocial place, at nearly three years of trying to adapt, is still criminal, dangerous, filthy and antisocial, with an extra special dose from Super Negligent Landlord Thomas Heilman.

No one would put up with him, back in Germany.
We aren't putting up with him, and the fact that it takes personal risk, persuading the neighbors, and special effort, is not heartening.

This guy is the jerk, he made the mistakes, and doesn't care enough about anything other than his own problems, and won't bother to fix mistakes he has made in any other location.

This is my blog, and I can say what I want.
Review the First Amendment, before you talk to me about anything else.

I would like to be able to stay in Frederick, but it has been increasingly painful.
My practice, is the only orienting force.

The rest of it, including Chuck's employment, has just been a wall of annoyance and pain, the neighborhood is a pain (though we intend to pay that back directly to the causor, Tom Heilman) and there is a huge squirrel problem..

I really like this part of the country, from a naturalist perspective.

From the perspective of dealing with the mass of humanity... I can only hope for an epidemic.

2010-10-13T22:24:00.000-04:00

If I were to sit up, and take a drink, between all the interesting events around me, I would probably be drinking more than I really should.

2010-10-11T21:48:00.000-04:00

Back home, it's still 80 degrees.

It will go down to 66, and everyone will be opening their windows, and piling on quilts with great gusto.

It's getting to be chili season in Texas, and I would miss that, but my man makes kickass chili, like an adopted Texas son should.
Tomorrow it will be up to 90F, and that may continue through winter, except for cool fronts.

Here, it might top out at 79, and that's a hot day, this time of year. After the storms blow through, we will be at 45 overnight, probably wanting to fire up the wood stove again.
Highs will be in the 60s, lows in the 40s, for the rest of the week. That's what I signed up for. I don't mind being cold so much (the logistics are kinda annoying) but I do mind too much of any one kind of weather.

Last year we had a lot of snow here, but I had seen more, in Germany (though Germany had the wherewithal to deal with it). We had a lot of heat, but I grew up under way, way worse than that.

Somehow, coming from all the extremes of my experience, this place tried me, and I found it amusing. Coming from the extremes of my experience, I find most of life amusing.

Back home, the cicadas and other buzzy beasties will still be fizzing and whizzing their way through the night, but the crickets will keep up their steady chirp through the slowly cooling nights.

When the temps finally do dip to 65F or so, the crickets will swell to a pulsing, orchestral velvet chirp. The summer wall of sound, so oppressive, if you didn't grow up falling asleep to it, transitions to a kind of violin concerto of cricket sound. Not the faint, rhythmic random "cricks" of the Northeast, but a real tidal wave of tiny cricket wings, rocking natives to sleep on tremendous swells of sound.

Once upon a time, I couldn't imagine my feet outside the Texas state line.
Truth was, from my first step outside, I couldn't stay in, any more.

Frank Bedicek used to say, that once a Texan slept under a blanket in August, it was over.
One freezing evening in Yellowstone, and more in the effortless high cool of Glacier National Park, and this Texas girl was a fugitive from the relentless, stinging, pollen poison cauldron of the Texas climate. It turns out that three scorpion stings (attained in bed or otherwise innocently occupied) and chronic bronchitis from cedar allergies leading to chronic asthma, on top of a catastrophic allergy to poison ivy, was enough to dislodge the hometown girl.

My love of my friendsandrelations there, brings me back, as often as my health will stand it.

We all strike out, seeking our way, given the opportunity.
I am still on that journey, seeking a place I can follow my practice, help others follow their practice, and create a place for clear vision and innovation in my own life, continues.

Our recent time in Japan, the deep clarity and focus with which some of the those people live their lives, affected me so deeply.

I go back to the song by Nickel Creek, which I have listened to since the beginning of my time of transition.

"Others have excuses, I have my reasons Why."

I am striving to live a rational, grounded, yet inspired life.
Somewhere between the ground and the sky, is the path to heaven.

In Texas, the sweetest sound, is the crickets between 60 and 50F. The other bugs and frogs have gone back to sleep, and the crickets have the stage.
Their rhythm is slow and melodic, with room for individual improvisation. We get it earlier here in Maryland, we keep it longer, and the crickets probably make sweaters or something, to keep going.

I have a hard time killing crickets.. like many influenced by Eastern thought, they are too lucky and too blessed. I tend to "relocate" them instead. I like to pick them up, I find them rather cute and fat and "pettable" and love their habit of cleaning their antennae, in difficult situations.

Tiny motions, in a beautiful melodic universe, lull my Southern mind to center, to peace, to sleep.

2010-10-04T20:30:00.000-04:00

This is a photo of me demonstrating the Seitei set of Shinto Muso Ryu Jodo with my dear friend Peter Boylan at the Kashima Shrine in Japan, courtesy the sweet folks at Capitol Area Budokai.

Everything in the photo reflects who I am, and how far I have come, to have the honor of being there.

Jet-lagged, recovering from a second, 2nd degree shoulder separation in an aikido class three years ago with the help of prolotherapy injections, I look worn but focused.

I was quite comfortable in the shoulders and neck through the training, except for my feet and legs, which were unused to seiza on hardwood and tatami, and turned a light lavender after much ignoring of pain signals.

I have spent my entire adult life in love with Japanese classical martial arts, and the opportunity to "go there and do that" is a gift from Peter Boylan and Deborah Klens-Bigman, who were our tour guides for the trip.

It is also a gift from my sweetie, my soulmate, Chuck Gordon.

He worked hard to prepare me, he made the connections, and I got to this place through him.

What a great delight it was, to jump into the deepest of the deep end, breathless and with a sense that, while I had spent in my life in preparation, I was still not prepared.

Yet, I was welcomed, beckoned even, into the great torrent of information the instructors provided.

I have some handwritten journal entries I will enter as I have time.

I have also realized, how precious time is, and how much of it we waste, padiddling around, when we should be focussed on our goals, and our time in contemplation of our lives and how we wish to live them.

2010-09-15T12:41:00.001-04:00

Headed to Japan tomorrow.. a bundle of nerves and anticipation. I will try to send little updates here as possible!

2010-08-29T08:44:00.002-04:00

My very favorite season here.. windows open, birds chirping, crickets "crikking".. cool air drifting in, and feeling so delicious.

The days ahead may be humid yet, but I've got my taste of fall!

2010-08-21T22:55:00.002-04:00

Our adventure to Japan has so many layers, for both of us.

For Chuck, it's this mysterious history he has inherited. I am really a kind of blind participant in that, excluded from the internal conversation, just a student. Yes, even me. Our relationship is like that, we have some weird walls that would piss other people off, that we just accept.

For me, it's truly unknown ground.

I don't buy that Japan is the be-all/end-all of budo training.

I do understand that it is the source. I also understand that modern Japanese culture is not so interested in all this archaic stuff... and we bonkers gaijin are.

I understand that it could be one of those truly world-shifting trips.. but I really don't know how that's going to happen.

On a deeply personal note, I will get to see my old friend David there. I saw him back in March, in Austin.. I engineered my trip to coincide with his, and we just picked up where I left off.

Listening to Susan Tedeschi's "Tired of my Tears" is pretty applicable here.

There are rooms and rooms of Old History in Austin, Texas.

Some of them belong to me.

I choose to remember where they are, and mostly live without them.

They do better without me, and I do better, without them.

I go back to Austin, and fall into the routes and ruts I lived in, all too easily.

It's hard to admit, and communicate, that I have let go of my roots.

It's also not really true. My map and compass of the world, will always show Austin, Texas, as home.

However, I can neither afford nor survive it.

Even where I am, is simply a holding place.

I am a person in transit, until I find my place.

2010-08-21T22:30:00.003-04:00

Sometimes it astonishes me, just wandering around in the world.

The way people act, and don't act.

I keep such standards for myself, and those around me, and I am so often challenged by the integrity of those around me.

Those who surpass me, who inspire me to Pay Attention.

Those who have no attention to their place in society, those who don't care how their inaction allows problems in other people's lives, they also inspire me.

Not in a nice or friendly way.

The life of an Old Country Texan is full of all kinds of personal responsibility.

I spent every day in the company of a .357 Ruger.

I had to take responsibility for that.

I had 45 acres I was responsible for defending from dumpers, trespassers, and other morons.

I was always armed.

Now, in Maryland, I have a little more faith in the FPD, but I still need some firepower.. contemplating and negotiating.

2010-08-14T22:27:00.003-04:00

You know, I've been back in the US for over two years, and I am just exhausted with the changes. My changes began over three years ago with cg's medical odyssey. I do not include my own shoulder separation in this. I didn't let it slow me down much professionally.. just now am I addressing it. It really broke my heart that I couldn't do jujutsu any more, but I am a practical person. I can still do weapons, and I love those.

The prolotherapy is Slowing Me Down! but I can sleep on my left shoulder again.. and that is a beautiful thing..

The changes in the business, the changes in myself. The changes in my environment.

I haven't bothered to track them all, but I think it's time that I did.

My very work is about change, and I have to change so much, myself, to contain the work I do.

First of all, I have to adapt to the work I offer to others.

Second, I have to grow into the work.

Third, I have to work out where I am growing into the work, and where I can offer it.

Then we can get into Where I offer it, pay rent, advertise, work the system, deal with inquiries, adjust marketing message, and so on.

I have started over five times, at least, in the last 10 years, to keep up with what I am doing with my practice.

I am at a place where I am still growing into the work, still growing the work, and still getting to know my network, and it is all working for me!

It's like I finally struggled out of the womb, breathed, and am learning to crawl.

Now, I have to stay in place long enough to get to walk.

I haven't had that chance, professionally, before.

With our landing in Frederick, my practice has taken off, with some networking.

His job is predictably federally miserable, but the path he has invested in, with me as his 401K, prohibits him uprooting my practice as anything resembling sensible.

At least in my practical mind.

He worked hard for me to get what I have, the qualifications I earn my way with, here.

He should be eager to reap those benefits.

He has applied for jobs in Schweinefurt and Heidelburg. That would be great in about 5 years, but for the next short time, it means an unaccompanied tour, because I will not leave my practice.

My practice, which was the focus of thousands of hours, and almost my entire income while we were in Germany, meant to finance our life together and eventually his retirement, is something he would just trade out, to get away from where he is.

I get that it is very stressful for him, I would like to get him out of there, but this has happened in every job I have ever observed him in. He gets into a bad situation politically, and wants to bail geographically, rather than solving local problems. It's a model he grew up with.

It's easier to bail.

Because I have become exhausted by the change of venue option, my choice is to dig in and fight. Not because I think here is special, in fact, I think the city of Frederick is a lost cause of redneck morons and over-tolerant liberals. The Harleys need to shut up, and the dogs, and people need to put cigarettes in trash cans, and trash in trash cans.. not on the street for everyone to see, proclaiming "Frederick is full of Trash!" which would not arguably be untrue.

This is where I have landed, and I am too fucking annoyed, and tired, to go anywhere for a while.

I don't think I want to "retire" here, but I haven't decided where to take that step.

2010-07-21T23:10:00.002-04:00

so who in their right mind would reject research findings, proving what they do, effective?

My colleagues, that's who. Some of them anyway.

You know, as much as I support professional openmindedness, I just find this plain STOOPID.

I will inform myself, and I will make my own choice.

Every competent bodyworker is thinking this, if they are reading me.

We are dealing with generations of the Politically Vested, the Non-Present.

The research has blown it all open, we have only to Pay Attention.

The thing is, we have to change the total culture, to really succeed in bodywork in the E Coast.

I'm not so sure it's going to happen, to the level that people want to be successful.

I've been working at those "sub- successful" levels for years, but at some point, people need to pay off their student loan debts and other nasties.

I was never lucky enough, to even have to deal with that.

I am simply uneducated.

I am an autodidact. Through my own impetus, I taught myself about bodies, mine, yours, and our societies's.. now, it's your responsibility to teach everyone else.

I never had a chance.

I had help, I made what I had.

You can, too.

Work it out.

2010-05-13T21:22:00.003-04:00

I'm lost on a hot night in Texas.

I'm emotionally unmoored, no longer attached to my surroundings, and I've gone out to find solace.

My martial arts friends are also my musician friends, and fans of same.

I'm following a standing invitation on a late weekday night, to come out and hear some music.

Maybe I can take the next day off, maybe I'll just take the sleep dep.. but I follow them all out, and I'm on a street corner in downtown Austin, sweating in the summer night, or huddled alone on a corner in a tiny bar, sipping my Shiner and grinning at the band.

I only recently gave away the boots I used to wear.. they fell apart from the walking and the dancing. I used to slip them on, under my hakama, walking back to my car from aikido class, after training late into exhaustion, training myself into tatters, driving home destroyed, and wondering why I always felt I was going the wrong way..

It's hard to explain, this social activity, I did all by myself.

Being alone in a crowd takes a certain kind of deeply isolated mindset, and that was me, at the time. I knew the band, I knew I was safe. I knew a couple of likely guests, one of them a quiet good friend, teacher and resource.

Things could have gone very, very badly, but they did not.. and I could sit at a table and quietly listen to my heart, and blues to match its tune.

I would walk back to my car in that absolute isolation, drive home in same, and go to sleep alone, next to someone else.

That's why it didn't work.. I am still alone.

2010-04-25T23:30:00.003-04:00

I took my first mushroom foray today. No morels or anyone else presented themselves for picking, but the season has been long and cold, and I don't think the mycelium is fruiting just yet. I did find tons and tons of fiddleheads, much later than what I was finding on the C&O. Gambrill's elevation really does have an effect on the arrival of the seasons.

I drove Chuck to work, got into the post gym for my cardio, and got to the dentist's.

I've been spending entirely too much quality time with my dentist lately. Fortunately, he's a great guy, and a good dentist, it's just not my idea of a good time. Luckily, most of my teeth are good.

My reward was a day in the woods.. the silent whisper of the leaves, the birds singing 'each to each' and I am also certain, that they sing to me.

Gambrill is part of the ridge visible from our back windows and porch, and I love to get out there and see what's going on. I tend to pick a certain area to study the markers of the change of seasons. Others may become bored with the same path, while I become deeply enthralled with how different it can be, from month to month. Gambrill seems to be my reference/learning spot.

The wind was blustery and the day cold, unless I was walking uphill.

I got to see a cluster of ladyslipper orchids, and the tree azaleas in bloom, what a treat! I had never seen ladyslippers before. I got pictures, and will post them if they turn out.

Next time, I'm hoping for morels!!

I'm also just happy to get to walk around in the Sky Cathedral.

2010-04-21T20:40:00.003-04:00

I have to come out with my experience in these weeks, since Frank left us.

I worked on an ovarian cancer surgery scar today, which would have been exactly the same work I would have done for Frank, the work I planned for him, post-recovery.

I told my client, I thanked her, for letting me do the work.

I am still grieving Frank, and I don't plan to stop, until I am done..

Getting to to the ovarian cancer scar work was a real step in the right direction.

I thanked my client, for letting me do the work, I wanted to do, for the friend I had lost. She thanked me, for being so there with her experience.

She got it, and she was so glad and grateful to be the recipient of my planning, of my compassion, of my pent-up healing intention.

Frank is not letting me go. I didn't figure he would.

I'm not ready to say goodbye, and Frank is not ready to say goodbye to me.

I'm OK with that. He had a lot of Good Work in mind for me, I am still working on understanding it.

The work I am here to do, is bigger than me.

Frank wants you to know, that he keeps reminding me.

I'm listening, is what I want you to know.

2010-04-18T17:17:00.002-04:00

The last weekend with Quintin Chambers and the little jodo group here, served as a thoroughgoing wakeup call for my own practice. Crossing sticks with someone nearly twice my age and feeling that authenticity, that gleeful combative edge from QC, was a reality check most of us never have the opportunity to get slapped with. I understand why his students hold him so dear.. because now I do, too.

Admittedly, I've been whining and grumbling and feeling sorry for myself. We started SMR Jodo at my own insistence, because it's been so hard for cg & I to create space to train in. He needs to train, just to keep moving, and I just need to train. My twice separated shoulder and the bulging disk in my neck can't take any more ukemi, but by damn, I'll not put down weapons training. Chuck has been leaning more towards weapons for years, more since the hip replacement, which has really slowed him down.

I didn't really understand what Jodo was about, I just knew it was something good, and what we had done with Peter was incredibly interesting. I didn't understand what Aikido was about, or Kokoro Ryu, or Rolfing for that matter, when I started. I've been coasting on that gut feeling that guides most primates, most of the time.

Like the eight-ball in the corner in the corner pocket, I've just gotten lucky, so many times.

QC asked me why, after having done so many things, I ended up in SMR Jodo.

It flashed through my mind that this was completely backwards, that I should be interviewing HIM.. but..

The reason was the same.

I wanted something I could do for the rest of my life. I like the depth and the variety of the art. I am more naturally a sword person, but there's room for that, and room to grow with other weapons.

I was exposed to a depth of humility, compassion, endless inquiry, passion and talent for teaching, integrity, elegance and simple, savage joy in combat, that just blew me away. And I got to speak conversational German, learn more about that and other languages, exchange puns, and just enjoy sharing with good people.

The first day I spent the morning dealing with a possible ovarian cyst rupture, and accompanying rolling around on the floor at 6am, and doctor visit just to be sure I was all right to practice. It was a bad morning, at least I didn't throw up on the poor cat, who was trying to comfort me.. all I cared about, was that I didn't have to hostess the weekend from a hospital bed.

Chuck got me a hot pack and in to a PA, who pronounced me sound after extensive palpation, discussion, and urine sample. Chuck dropped me off at home, and I finished my (delayed) hostess work, then walked to the Bernard Brown Center where we had rented a wonderful, cheap space for training. I was so pale and sweaty from that little stroll, that Dan S tactfully negotiated a "rest day" for me, not realizing that I wasn't leaving the room.. He kept asking if it was still OK for everyone to stay with us.. Dan is still getting to know me.. heaven help him. Brendan, please provide tech support. 8-)

For me, I'll stand up and show up, if my limbs work, and my nervous system will get me there.

By then, I was starving, which I took as a Good Sign, and got lunch with the group, but I still didn't dress out or attempt to train for the rest of the day, mostly because I was just still too shaky to trust my weapons control. I took a lot of pictures, some of which are quite good due to incredible lighting in the space, and I look forward to sharing them.

We got through the day, got everyone fed, settled, and back to the house. By then I was back to functional.

The morning came, and I got everyone out the door, showed up and dressed out. The weekend progressed pretty normally from there. We learned three new kata, and Joe and QC pushed us out of Seitei into Omote (basically, you're not raw beginners any more).

I'm still the P!nk of budo, I'll do anything I think I can get away with, and laugh my ass off trying.

I found a real kindred soul in QC, and he kicked my @ss, just bowing in.

He settles down slowly on that reconstructed knee, and bows in just like anyone else.

From that start point, my Bad Morning was a coffee spill.

The thing that QC does, with that infectious combat glee, is infuse practice with a real spark of life and death, a real awareness that what we are doing is lethal. QC's training smile is a dragon's grin.. you never forget it, or those eyes rimmed with the blue of time, fixed on you, with humor and perception.. what have you got, where are you going, how will you get there.. always thinking of the riai. Even when nothing else is going on, moving and thinking, all the time. QC is hyperkinetic even at seven plus decades of life. We should all be so vital, so lucky, so motivated.

"That's what we do, we attack the weapon"..

He talked about controlling the line of attack, as I have been taught by Chuck. The angle is not quite as suicidal, most of the time. Many times, I've wondered, how much of that was CG, and how much of that was what he was taught. The options are many, and this beginner's mind can only begin to comprehend.

I understand why Frank Gordon broke down, in private conversation with me, after training in the seminar with Sugano, after his first battle with cancer. he was just so glad to reach those levels of practice, again. I share it because he would want me to, to make my point. I wish we could have a moment like that again, in fact, I had hoped for it. I will always be sorry that we won't (Frank Gordon died of a blood clot after followup cancer surgery).

QC has given me clearer understanding, of the kind of intensity one can attain, despite physical infirmities, in one's practice.

In fact, QC, and Frank, have given me an ever clearer directive in terms of my training.

Ichi Go, Ichi E.

One life, one meeting.

I may never see you again, but I will never forget what I have learned from you.

I will also not wait, to find the sweetness, the intensity of survival, in my training.

2010-04-02T22:23:00.002-04:00

To break a lease:

Don't clean up after 2 large dogs pooping and peeing in 3 meters sq with no regard to anyone elses' property lines.

Yell and holler after 10pm on a regular basis

Abuse, denigrate and yell racial epithets at your neighbor at all hours.

Your neighbor looks about like you do..

No conversation below "HOLLER" at any time of day.

Unlicenced vehicles, constant police calls and general disruption at any time of day or night.

Recently, they've started giving the dogs commands in German, so we won't understand.

yeah. umm. talk about Not Paying Attention and Dumbass..

2010-04-02T22:01:00.002-04:00

So here I am in what looks like the conservative's chair.

I don't care one bit about pot. People who smoke rarely get in fights, though they shouldn't drive. Most Americans shouldn't drive. No one is more careless, and no one has a higher death rate.

I've been unemployed, and during this time, I was not only working, but desperately looking for full time work, and materially participating in the construction of my own house (built the gable ends, mudded all interior walls, set and mortared slate, finished doors.. )

I was busier when I was "unemployed" than any time I spent holding down some chair for a government agency or company.

Now, I help people and deal with the administrivia, over 40 hrs per week.

Three hours or more of this, I write off to the Vultures. HSA forms, explanation calls, and more.

I can't imagine what it's like for a conforming organization, except that I used to work for one.

I was on both confirmation and collection calls... I hated the organization, and saw the owner dip into the cash box for party money, and said so.. I didn't do well there.

At the same time, I do conscientiously pay my taxes (preferably with education and other fees) I strenuously adhere to local regulations, and I report muthafuckas who don't.

2010-04-02T21:37:00.004-04:00

I'm dealing in an awful world right now.

I got a week in Austin, and it was like visiting the idea Disney wants to sell you, where everything is beautiful, and everyone loves you.

It really was.. I actually had delusions of moving back, partially because it was so nice and cool.. but I saw those junipers waiting for me, and I felt the sun pressing me down.. and ..

I miss everyone so much, and it is all so beautiful to see all of you, to be with you and be enlightened, so enlightened and uplifted by your company.. that is the only thing which might draw me back.

Frederick is a thorny world for us right now.

My practice is a heaven on earth, of people who have been waiting for me to show up.

But I am walking in a land of ghosts and demons, a land of what is, and where I was.

In Germany, my neighbors never would have been hideously unsocialized drug addicted redneck ruffian trash.

Here, it just seems to be some kind of casual matter of course.

Back in Texas, I could have just shot them, and moved on.

Here, the state won't do anything, and won't let me do anything. The only choice, is to drag the landlord over the block, dollars sent to the legal profession.

I am praying to my Real Estate Guru Frank Gordon..

Frank, I heard your voice today.. you said to me.. "doggonit, I wasn't supposed to die".

Frank, I put it out to you before, but it was hard to say.

You may have others who listen better, but I am here, and you know my ears, my heart and my mind were always open.

2010-02-16T22:51:00.002-05:00

The poor cat finally got sick enough to need to go to the vet.

Of course she had a bladder infection peak during the blizzard of 2010. I would have walked her over the bridge to the vet, if I had to.

I took her drugged body out of the cage, to fly her back to the US.. it was horrible because none of us wanted to go, and here we made this great sacrifice to go the wrong direction, as far as we were concerned.

This time, we were lucky enough to get to bring her back home.

She is napping on the couch cushions after docilely accepting her antibiotics, and enthusiastically nomming the treats I put down for her after that.

We get so attached to our family, it isn't a bit wrong, to take such pains over two legs and four.

2010-02-06T23:59:00.002-05:00

You know, you might be following in my footsteps, if you aren't paying attention..

First of all, don't ruin your body. Repair it, keep it, sustain it. You live there.

Second of all, know when to quit,

Know when to rest.

The answer is, as early and often as possible.

The fight will wait for you.

Trust me, it will..

2010-02-06T21:27:00.003-05:00

I miss Brie that does not taste like piss!

What is wrong with marketers, that you think we will eat that shit? next time, I will come back and feed it to them .

I love Trader Joe's for their Mimolette, a cheese I discovered on a morning's walk in Alsace, and fell MADLY in love with.. I will buy the oldest, most diseased-looking Mimolette and have a crazy love affair with it and some damn good red wine.

The mulled wine I am sipping is Catalunya, mulled with German spices and plentiful slices of fresh peeled ginger and Deutsche Glueheweingewuerz..

So it's all wrong, but it's delicious.

John Mayer says that when you are dreaming with a broken heart, the giving up, is the hardest part.

I do not, and I never will, give up.

It is not in my nature.

I do not give up on anything, on any issue, ever.

I may change my mind, but I never surrender.

Anything I decide on, or decide to fight for, is well considered, and immutable.

Part of my great, terrible heart's loyalty, lies forever in Bavaria.

I love that land's great independent spirit, their loyalty, their indomitability, and their deep, crazy enjoyment of life in the extremes their environment offers.

A Texan of Irish and German descent, I am extracted from, and thrive on, extremes.

I am ruled by one thing.. a steady pull to the rational.

This is one of the things I love about my German roots: A real examination of reality.

The balance is my lyrical, intuitive leap Irish side, that I can make these intuitive bounds to understanding of things no one has seen, or has thought of grasping.

Then I am the norm of America, I am the median of our inspiration.

Measure intuition with reason.

Find the answers, and leap again.

What I miss, is a land where it all works together.

I miss the land of Robert Schleip, of Jean-Pierre Barral and my dear teacher Peter Schwind.

I'm living in a half-life land, where I'm pushing the boundaries of my own profession (and they need pushed in a big Zamboni kinda way) and I am having this conversation with a PT I have found who is basically going to save my ass... because he has trained with the osteopaths and he does nerve and visceral work, and no one in this area has elevated to that level I am so used to).

I had to raise my profession for myself.

I listened quietly.

I took it in, I received. I also received some extremely badass nerve and visceral work, full of Q&A.

And then I told him, that yes, I took the classes for the PTs and the osteopaths, but I took them in German.

As long as he wasn't teaching in German, I told him.. while holding his quite honest, very level and interested gaze.. as long as he wasn't teaching in German, I could follow him.

I am terribly ashamed, that he would ever mistake my profession for massage therapy, or assume that Rolfers couldn't keep up with PTs and osteopaths.

I kept up with them in German, and French-accented English. I learned about the Falx Cerebri and cranial nerves..

I encourage my colleagues to continue to improve their reputation, until I don't have to deal with this particular hurdle.

In other words, most other professions think Rolfers are cultists, narrow-minded morons, and not able to keep up with basic physical therapy principles, nerve paths or basic anatomy. This makes me so very sick..

I kept up with classes with professional osteopaths, physical therapists, and other professionals, in a language not my own.

German.

If you could do the same, then you can talk about me.

Otherwise, sit down.

Ich hatte es gelearnt. und Du?

Ja, aber nein.

Keine Frage.

Und Mehr?

Hasst Du NICHST..

There are some terribly rude things I can say at this point, at which I will take a moment of grace.. and silence.. then I will speak my mind.

I miss COMPETENCE, RESPONSIBILITY, and INTELLIGENCE.

2010-02-06T19:48:00.002-05:00

My ex-pat friends get me..

We miss things at varying levels, depending on our attachment to them.

I couldn't care less about that football thing this weekend.

It's so not a part of any relevant, measurable reality.

I have NO use for anything they are selling.

I miss our great warm German house with the huge thick walls and capacious basement.

Our house here is Exactly the Right Size for us, and my best investment last year was a beautiful, efficient soapstone wood stove. This stove is right now keeping us a cozy 70F with virtually no effort and only a couple substantial logs.

It's so hard to talk about this displacement.

It's so hard to say how dishonest, how careless, how uselessly aggressive and stupid Americans seem, after participating in European society.

The vultures stink and hang about our house, and we have to find a way to banish them.

I have pretty much Had It.. it's bad enough, to get transplanted into rude society, without society being all kinds of intentionally rude.

2010-01-31T20:04:00.002-05:00

I'm getting a good start on a walk in the shoes of my clients, yet again.

Something in my neck has gone awry.. I have dull pain at c4-5, mild bilateral parasthesia, and a constant low-grade dural headache. And my stomach is at its limit for NSAIDs..

The thing I really want to do is go back to Germany, to my dear teachers and ask for help. I should have gotten on those tables back in the fall when I had a chance.

The number of people here with the level of training I was used to back there, is vanishingly scarce. My dear friend & colleague CS saved me when I got back from Europe and landed hard, with a session that left me ice-cold and shaking.

I'm not sure what it is, there in my neck, but he walked right up to it and started the deconstruction. I love that about CS, he's stupid fearless like me, but we do it in such different ways. He gets in people's faces right away, and they know he's serious. I wait too long, and by the time they've pissed me off, I've gone thermonuclear.

I'm working on that balance.

I'm never NOT serious (quite silly, but never, ever lacking intent), but people take the diffident aspect more easily than the meter of sharp, folded steel I use for a backbone.

The wood stove's glass face is billowing purplish blue, which tells me the new cord of wood we ordered and stacked today is burning clean & hot. This wonderful invention of natural soapstone and cast iron, with a catalytic combustor to clean its emissions, has made our chilly, heat-pump-afflicted house a home. It has certainly made CG and the cat a LOT happier! well me too, in my weaker moments.

Mostly I think hot tea and more clothing can cure all chills, but I don't have 10 inches of titanium in my femur.

The wood stove, some Chardonnay spritzer after a nice chili dinner Chuck served, and a hot bath he is waiting for me in, are the features in my life tonight. Sure itnwas Zero Fahrenheit this morning, and will be 12F tonight, but the wood stove is stoked, the insulated curtains are closed, and the snow on the roof is holding fast.

I am the luckiest of the lucky..

My pains are my study and my learning, and I am open to the learning, and able to pay it all forward.

I just want you to know..

It didn't come easy.

None of this came easy.

I got a lucky break named Chuck Gordon.

He got me through school, and now he's reaping the benefits of a partner who feeds him, buys him beer, pays half the mortgage, makes him go to the gym, and pesters him about his budo.

I started out a the daughter of a poor black child (my dad didn't know he was white until he was about 8, due to being raised by black household help) who wanted to be a lawyer and ended up a postal worker for 30 years.

My mother was the daughter of a civil engineer, a polymath and would-be scholar whose abusive background robbed her of her potential.

She is a professional Spanish-English translator helping immigrants get their GEDs and become functional members of US society.

People like me don't get to go to Europe, we don't get to buy nice cars.

We don't get good health insurance without a good job. We tend to freeze in those jobs, from sheer fear.

I have a bigger, better opportunity.

Even when I am in trouble.

2010-01-30T23:12:00.003-05:00

I've made it through all kinds of crazy.

These days, my life is a kind of freefall..

"The world has made me the man of my dreams" (M'shell Ndegeocello)

I am standing in a profoundly centered place.

I earned it, and I was given it.

If I had not earned it, I would not have been given it.

Last year, I made more than my father ever made in one year.

I talked to him tonight, and he told me.

"Others have excuses, I have my reasons why". (Nickel Creek)

There is a beautiful, delicate place where we can combine our vocations, avocations, passions and talent, and some years of hard work, fear and absolute, abject risk to make something happen which surpasses our own being.

I got to do that.

I really got to step into a training program which prepared me to help people in some unprecedented ways, very mechanical, very basic.

Then I got to do it, in one of the most stressful of places.. an Army post.

I did some work with German people as well, as they kept calling me, and I had to start a practice on the German side, speaking German, with the help of a German apothecary owner.

Once I had made my way in the German and Army environments (the struggles in the latter were epic) just showing up and setting up a practice in Frederick was a freakin' cake walk. Hell, practicing with German clients in German was a cake walk, compared to dealing with the Army. Some clients preferred to see me off post.

My ambition shows up in some very weird ways..

I want SI to have its own legislative movement, I want us away from massage.

It is not relevant, applicable, or helpful for us. I wish it was.. But we really need to pick up our own torch and keep moving.

Once upon a time, I was the train wreck "waiting to happen" well I've happened, and I'm over it.

I'm as ruined as I care to be, and I will do what I can to spare anyone following my bitter steps, a little suffering.

Don't try so hard. Every little bit you try, helps you. Stay with that.

Ask what you are compensating for. You may never get an answer, but at least you will have asked.

Don't think breaking yourself, means anything.

There are ways to experience breaking, that won't hurt you.

Try them first.. because physical injuries last. Don't accept emotional injury either.

Find healthy challenges. NEVER accept abuse.

Don't ever turn your development over to anyone else.

NO ONE CAN DO THIS FOR YOU.

I don't care what level you are working on, no guru can see you.

You have to do your own Work, and you have to be uncompromising.

It is ugly, it is terrible, it is uncomfortable and, in the end, liberating.

Freedom can be awful, too.

Welcome to my freefall.

2010-01-30T22:36:00.002-05:00

A day of relatively heavy snow has passed.

We visited a friend up on little Sugarloaf Mountain, where the snow was naturally a bit heavier. Our little Element made its way (with me as pilot) safely through the slick fluff back into town, where we ran a few errands and scurried home for dinner.

I really wasn't either frightened or nervous about the snow. Watching the carcasses of the trucks and SUVs of the careless, reckless and just plain DUMB on the sides of the roads back to Fredneck, I was completely equanimous.

In low gear, no hurry, with the natives keeping their distance, a little sliding here and there, we just kept on keepin' on.

It's like my budo practice these days.

There is absolutely nothing to be frightened of.

I have already survived a couple decades, and have pretty minor problems to deal with.

The problem is, keeping it that way.

To this end, my jujutsu practice is limited to none. Chuck has the same problem, still unsure of his new prosthetic. There are still some bugs to work out, but I am optimistic. It's kind of my job.

Now, I am learning the art of just putting one foot in front of the other.

I am finally learning from my teacher.

When he is not teaching me so much, more responding to direct requests on specific subjects of my interest.

2010-01-27T00:09:00.003-05:00

Something funny happened today.. someone called my SMR kata "sexy".. a nice enough guy for me to be endlessly amused. I am both flattered & flummoxed.

I started my budo training in 1989. I was about 20. Now I'm past 40, with some career-ending injuries. I should be done, but I won't quit.

I started with aikido in 1989, took it back up in 92, and pursued kenjutsu, aikijutsu, judo, and wing tsun, with a little kickboxing on the side until 1999.

At this point, personal development separated me from my partner, and I struck out North into Indiana, trying out Kokoro Ryu Jujutsu with one Chuck Gordon. It was, and may still be, an extant sogo-budo derived from Sekiguchi Ryu, painful, violent and uncompromising. It is not physically pleasant to practice, and I am not sure how much of it I can still do, but I would like to try, because it is a valid, dying art, and not many do it the way my teacher does, especially since his teacher has gone.. and he has not been back to find what his teacher may have left him to do.

I am the poster grrrl with no poster.. I love swords, sticks, Pretty Sharp Things, implements of Mayhem and horrible things to do with people you love, and to people who Bother you.

I carried my father's switchblade in high school, and once answered the door with a King Charles II sabre in my hand, when I didn't appreciate the caller. It was Texas, what was a girl with no gun to do?

I wore heavy boots to make my point to young men in junior high, before I figured out knives. I was dysnumeric, pathologically shy, cross-dominant clumsy, and unsocialized. Growing up is hard for everyone.

Thank you Ani DeFranco:

"I don't try to give my life meaning, by demeaning you,

and I'd like to state for the record,

I did everything that I could do.. "

I've done a few crazy things in my life.. nothing big but I ended up with some interesting stories. I found a home in martial arts where my energy and aggression could find a positive direction. I don't really think of my gender when I take something on. I'm fortunate enough to live in a time when it's not a big deal.

I used my ability to focus, learned in the dojo, when dealing with the local Army Morale, Welfare and Recreation personnel, when they wouldn't give me space to work in, or pay me. I also used my Secret Weapon (aka Chuck) and I methodically & consistently brought down consequences on everyone who crossed me. I went out of my way to help those who helped me.

Eventually I was free to serve the Soldiers and their families, but I had to fight the system to do it. That's the Arrrmy..

Now I move on, with three feet of razor steel ever in my attitude, and almost four feet of oak increasingly at my service.

Meanwhile, as I am learning the basic Seitei of SMR, someone calls my kata.. "SEXY" . My (other, male) partner burst out laughing.

These guys are great, they have welcomed a couple of orphans and been very kind, patient & welcoming (some initial puzzlement, and who could blame them!). They practice quality budo and are nice folks. The guy I am picking on is very nice, and generous as a sempai & training partner, but he does say some strange things. SMR is enjoyable training, and the kata are sticking in my mind fairly well.

I'm neither here nor there on his comment, it's funny and..

if you think lethal intent is sexy, well..

Whatever.

Budo babes must bear their burdens.

8-/

2010-01-15T22:00:00.002-05:00

It's a more mysterious process, finding one's own way in one's own calling.

I'm not really sure it's in the writing department.

I'm not sure where it is.

I intend to explore the mediums.

There is something not just calling to me, but really beckoning me to do some kind of work, as it has for all this time.

It's not writing (too frustrating) It's, I just don't know what it is.

Sure I can write, but my feelings and expressions bruise, they mangle, I write like I train, I am generations of intention to survive, and that is uncompromising.

My ideas launch themselves as uncompromising predators, and the system reacts to protect itself.

My choice is to make a steady diet of my opponents and thrive on it, or starve my own protective instincts for my organization, my family.

Why do my opinions bruise and mangle? Is it my colleagues' inability to adapt? am I asking too much?

Surely my colleagues are at least as intelligent and inquisitive as I am... if not..

I can read and understand every word of the Fascia Research Congress.

Can you?

I don't have a college degree, and I can still out-phrase anyone who does, in my specialty. If I can't, I can at least ask intelligent questions. BTW, there are no college degrees in in connective tissue in the US. We are WAY behind the times.

Wikipedia is your friend, and it's best you got caught up ASAP.

2010-01-15T21:22:00.003-05:00

It starts with a kid who feels so isolated, she might as well have grown up on the moon.

I used to walk down the street and try to decide which way I would go, to run away from home.

Usually when I was due for a switching from my mother, who didn't understand, or ask, why I had to stay after school. She just figured I had been bad, when in fact I had simply been bad at math, and my teacher wanted to help me out.

I walked down the street, and I was too pathologically shy to ask people to let me in. I sat on the neighbor's porch, hoping she would see me and ask me in. I was supposed to be cutting a switch for myself, and I sat there.

She had a beautiful 6-month-old baby girl, and I never wanted that kid to face what I had to face, and I thought about that.. later I babysat her, and now the little girl is a lovely young woman with two kids of her own who will never, ever have to cut their own switch.

Yes, Liz, that was me. Your mom asked me what I was doing there, and I couldn't tell her "escaping child abuse". I didn't know. And I didn't escape it. I was completely mute.

You were the closest thing I had to my own kid, and I'm proud of you, and my brother, who is the other one.

The things my parents did to me, I would never do to anyone.

They didn't know, and they did far better by me, than they themselves received.

I just tried to do better than that.

2009-12-22T22:34:00.001-05:00

Dear Sir or Madam,

As a member of this theoretically representative democracy, I and most of the people I know are not feeling represented at all, at this time.

Mr Lieberman is the dog in the manger, Mr Nelson beside him, grabbing benefits for themselves in the face of the New York Times/CBS News Poll showing 72% of respondents in favor of a government administered health plan.

http://crooksandliars.com/howie-klein/americans-want-real-health-care-reform

Opponents of abortion represent only, at most, 25% of American, composed of evangelical christians and catholics.

If you recall, our nation is a secular one, perhaps you should review our constitution and the bill of rights you are sworn to uphold. There should be a test to enter public office, composed of random questions from both.

Keep in mind: Article II, Section 1.8 does not actually contain "So Help Me God".

Article VI, Section 3 ".. no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office.. "

In fact, the religious minority is NOT allowed to tell everyone else what to believe, or what to do. No one is.

If you don't like abortion, and don't want to allow it, don't worry. People who believe as you do, won't get one. That's less than a quarter of the population (http://www.religioustolerance.org/rel_rate.htm). You don't have the right to tell anyone else what to do.

It's a far worse decision than 25% of the population telling the rest of them they have to get circumcised, wear headscarfs, or panty hose.

Shame on you! Shame on you for violating our Constitution, shame on you for condemning so many young women to death and poverty.

Shame on you, parties to this incredibly violative agreement. I, and countless thousands, are disgusted with you.

When young people are FULLY educated about reproductive health and given free, affordable access to conventional, healthy family planning tools and ideas for reaching adulthood without reproductive mishaps, they have a higher success rate than if they are just told to pretend they will never be faced with the choice, or that choices are easy.

http://stats.org/stories/contrac_v_abst_dec12_06.htm

Furthermore, senior officials were INTENTIONALLY left out of technical, rational discussions on Morning After birth control: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5427939

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow.. in the sanctuary, thou art with me.. and I listen..

http://www.ippf.org/en/Resources/Reports-reviews/Death+and+Denial.htm

Perhaps you don't understand, that pregnancy in poverty, breeds pregnancy..

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2528810/

If you truly wish to prevent abortion, make SCIENTIFIC sex education mandatory in junior high, make sure that access to science-based family planning is freely available with NO questions, barriers or "state interrogations". Put minority "faith-based" services in their place- voluntary and elective.

To quote the great philosopher Bessie Smith; "Ain't Nobody's Business, If I Do".

I've got a big fat check sent off to NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and whoever is running against you in the next election, if you aren't paying attention to the great big percentage of Female-Americans who are tired of your misinformation, your misogyny, and your willful ignorance of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Perhaps you should go pay our governing document a visit. It is a more reasonable document, than the one you laid your hand on, when you were sworn in. Furthermore, it was the document you swore to uphold. The other only works for a small percentage of the populace.

Thank you for your time and attention: Please don't send me a condescending letter about how you are working to protect me from the nasty old health reform bill or choice advocacy. I will be counting every one of these communications as a violation, and sending double my original donation to NARAL, or your opponent in the coming year, for every one of these automatic miscommunications/deliberate insults.

I can afford it.

You can't.

Emily D Gordon

Frederick, Maryland

2009-12-21T21:28:00.003-05:00

We're dressed up and mostly prepared for the holidays..

It seems like I haven't been anywhere for the holidays for a decade now, that I wasn't homesick for somewhere else.

We've just had a lovely batch of snow, he got an extra day off and I am quite busy with my practice.

I have a full-time job now, between managing the practice, and actually "practicing".

I'm listening to Thomas Friedman talk about traveling between Europe and the US being like "travelling between the Jetsons & the Flintstones".

He's right. We may have pioneered, but we are lost in a political morass of past loyalties keeping new ideas, technologies, even rational science from improving our lives.

We took high-speed trains across Europe, safe, sound, well fed and catered to. The most expensive train took us across Europe for less than $450 in less than 7 hours.

We still talk about going back, because no one here can get enough momentum to go forward.

2009-12-16T22:50:00.001-05:00

I am writing to express my dire disappointment in our representative democracy's ability to 1. uphold the constitution and 2. accurately represent the American People.

We have the Capacity for Reason. We need only the Opportunity to learn about it.

You may NOT legislate reproductive morality, without the taint of minority religious prejudice.

You may not pass laws about abortion, which are not tainted by extremist minority religious practice. You may also pass laws about circumcision or clitoridectomy, before you pass laws about what a free person may do within the confines of his or her body. If you would not consider these laws, do not consider any about or having to do with a a woman and any state of her body. If men could get pregnant, it would not be in question.

First of all, in case you have forgotten, our constitution does not sponsor any state religion.

Therefore, no specific religious rules may be applied or enforced.

Article II, Section 1.8 does not actually contain "So Help Me God".

Article VI, Section 3 ".. no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office.. "

I propose that unintentional or unwilling pregnancy be defined as "Involuntary Servitude", that is, slavery to BOTH the father, and the fetus. In fact, this is the biological state of the gestating mother, willing or not.

To say otherwise is to profess a profound misunderstanding of biology, which is rampant due to education cuts in both biology and reproductive education in the public system. Some products of our miseducation system prove the point by denying both evolution and climate change, and ending up in the Senate by no benefit of intellect.

THEREFORE: Amendment XIII, Section 1, constitutionally excludes human beings, including women, from involuntary servitude and slavery via unwanted pregnancy, and places the onus on the state to both prevent (!) and resolve this situation, when it unfortunately occurs.

THEREFORE: Access to Family Planning should be both free and freely accessible. That is, public education should contain SCIENTIFICALLY BASED information about sperm, eggs, intromission and TECHNICAL methods of avoiding impregnation. All other methods of education are based in either culture or religion and are not technically sound, and furthermore result in higher rates of pregnancy AND ABORTION.

Furthermore, senior officials were INTENTIONALLY left out of technical, rational discussions on Morning After birth control: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5427939

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow.. in the sanctuary, thou art with me.. and I listen..

http://www.ippf.org/en/Resources/Reports-reviews/Death+and+Denial.htm

I cannot stand this information- Would you send %52 of the population, from Nancy Pelosi to Madonna, back into the kitchen to make babies and bake cookies?

If you would, please sign up with the Taliban and leave your Senate or House post immediately, so that I can use you for target practice with the highest caliber weapon I can get my hands on, and train my sisters to use as well.

Perhaps you don't understand, that pregnancy in poverty, breeds pregnancy..

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2528810/

Perhaps I should thank you for precipitating grounds for a revolution on the part of any one of our %52, who is Paying Attention. You don't care about anything but making your religious benefactors happy.

Maybe you should care about the people you represent.

Maybe you should care about what happens to women, and their children, should they care to have them.. and should they care to have them, how they care for them. If you don't care, the %52 will let you know, if you pass or fail. So far, it's an EPIC FAIL. Shame on you, if you can't convince your colleagues, that their minority religious beliefs are WORSE than equivalent to forced circumcisions (male and female) and if they have not given birth themselves, (most members of the Senate or Congress have NOT!) if they would willingly and freely pass an entire coconut through their nether regions, as often as they have been willing to engage in carnal knowledge and/or intercourse. This thought process may have saved our august elected representative bodies much trouble, should it have been in any part, undertaken. Tiger, should have taken notes. Character epic FAIL.

Ask them if they would have enjoyed that process, as well as paying for college tuition for said coconut.

Then, perhaps, the Family Planning agenda begins to make some sense to the conceptual reproductive virgin, as some 85% of our supposedly "Representative" body are trying to come to terms with.

You do not Represent, if you don't stand up for us.

We are +%52.

We outnumber you.

We are mobilizing, we are Paying Attention. .

You are religious minorities with no right to regulate the MAJORITY.

We are speaking, and we are the majority. Many more than you think, are not religious.

http://ffrf.org/fttoday/1999/December99/news.html

You have no business legislating anything, anyone, by any power or religion.

This is a secular state, a free country.

Legislatively, religion does not, and should not, exist.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_prac2.htm:

"By about the year 2042, non-Christians will outnumber the Christians in the U.S."

Against Choice? Change it to "Pro-Slavery" and be honest about your agenda.

I've got a length of sheepskin written a long time ago, says I'm right.

Yeah, I actually read the muthafrakka.

Read it yourself, and keep your job.

I read the research, and I will do my very best to spread it around, and Pay Attention.

I will be aiding, abetting, assisting, and SENDING LOTS OF MONEY to everyone who supports this free agenda, and aiding, assisting, and abetting EVERYONE who opposes you, if you don't.

Trust me, I'm Santa, I'm keeping names & bank numbers.

Just keep this in mind:

"By about the year 2042, non-Christians will outnumber the Christians in the U.S."

Keep abortion language out of health care discussions.

Those who believe as you do, won't get abortions.

The rest, you have NO RIGHT to legislate.

Therefore, you have discharged your duty.

Go home, and let the rest of us take on the duty, commensurate with the rest of the Modern Western Civilization, of taking care so that our population does not drive us all into bankruptcy with unanswered health needs.

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html--

"Increasing adolescent abortion rates show positive correlation with increasing belief and worship of a creator, and negative correlation with increasing non-theism and acceptance of evolution; again rates are uniquely high in the U.S. (Figure 8). Claims that secular cultures aggravate abortion rates (John Paul II) are therefore contradicted by the quantitative data. Early adolescent pregnancy and birth have dropped in the developed democracies (Abma et al.; Singh and Darroch), but rates are two to dozens of times higher in the U.S. where the decline has been more modest (Figure 9). Broad correlations between decreasing theism and increasing pregnancy and birth are present, with Austria and especially Ireland being partial exceptions. Darroch et al. found that age of first intercourse, number of sexual partners and similar issues among teens do not exhibit wide disparity or a consistent pattern among the prosperous democracies they sampled, including the U.S. A detailed comparison of sexual practices in France and the U.S. observed little difference except that the French tend - contrary to common impression - to be somewhat more conservative (Gagnon et al.)."

2009-12-03T20:44:00.004-05:00

The Texan has come back to the American Continent.

Not willingly.

Our feet dragged through Schiphol to the fateful plane which would drag us, from our final flight for some years, from our beloved Europa.

I didn't know I needed to check in online with United instead of Lufthansa, and kind of freaked out when we couldn't figure it out.

We also looked at each other, full of the knowledge that we wouldn't be so bad off, making our way in Europe.

Hell, we put a national health care system in Afghanistan, but we won't do it for ourselves..

2009-11-18T21:45:00.003-05:00

Plenty is a funny place.

A couple of decades ago, I bought my first thanksgiving turkey.

I left it out to thaw too long in the Texas heat, and the giant thing (I had splurged) began to stink, and I realized I had to throw it out.

Twenty bucks was a little less than a days' work, in those days, for me, and it was heartbreaking.

I had wanted to cook it in the apartment I had just rented with a friend from school.. I'd like to say we were college roommates, but she was in college, and I was just getting by.

I remember the sickening thud as the carcass hit the bottom of the dumpster.. it was as if my dreams of independence had fallen to the bottom of the cheap metal container along with the poor wasted turkey's rotted flesh. I remember slinking sheepishly to my dad's for thanksgiving. That man is going to be very surprised when St Peter hands him a sainthood for making some effort to raise this loose cannon.

That Christmas, I went into the vacant lot behind our sleazy apartment complex with a spare hacksaw and brought in a scraggly little cedar tree for us to decorate.

We couldn't afford ornaments, and used stuffed toys & lingerie.. it was the Snoopy & Woodstock Crossdress Christmas.

This holiday is very different.

I have the capacity to make a comfortable living, within decent means. I will never be rich, except by the imagination of the rest of the world, especially without decent public health care.

Meanwhile, cg's job keeps us in health care at relatively minimal cost, and we have, on our travels, collected some luxury items unavailable in what most consider "normal" circumstances.

The turkey this year was ordered from a farmer's market, and will be lovingly brined & smoked.

Why does it matter, if I drink my beer from a Chodovar mug?

What do I care, if I drink wine from a plastic cup, or a Neuhaus crystal wine glass?

Can I put votives in the unmatched clarity of Neuhaus cups, and let them shine in great wide swathes of warmth?

Who cares, what sparkles on my Festivus tree?

Me..

I have a story carried in every touch of these things.. I refuse to follow my mother's hoarder habits, but I do have a story, and I have the same deeply kinesthetic memory.

I bought the mugs with the Labrador's face from Chodovar.

We picked out the wine glasses in Neuhaus by our dearly loved long-time home in the Oberpfalz, and bought the funny cups to hold the votives, in the shop Naydy showed us.

Naydy showed it to us, and that makes it even better.

The ornaments, we bought a little here and there at German Christmas markets, and it brings back the warmth & comfort we found there.

Some, we travelled to Cesky Krumlov for, and loved the adventure of getting there, staying there, and finding the crazy little discount store at the foot of the castle on the river.

We bought boxes and boxes of really crazy ornaments there, from Scottish Santas, to birds, to penguins (given away) and leopard print ornaments and all kinds of beautiful sparkly fragile madness.

Every bit of it has a story.

My fellow travellers and I, we bear the burden and the blessing, of being homesick for several places at once.

I think we all have the hunger, and the homesickness.. for me, I'm just so grateful to not be desperate over every little thing.. for however long this plenty lasts.. and trust me, I do not believe so much in luck.

More like, the opportunity for hard work, and the opportunity to make good, help others, and live reasonably well, conscientiously.. as honest folk do.. when they make it.

I hope I've made it.

I never trust that the other shoe won't drop, and I know life balances on many threads.

But, for now.. deep gratitude, and a willingness to keep it all going.

2009-10-12T20:50:00.002-04:00

Crazy on Richard Thompson's "persuasion"

I am in the spell of the Bavarian forest.

There is nothing like having this massive resource, just a quarter hour by walking or bicycle, from your front door.

There is so much there, from blueberries, to cranberries, to chanterelles, and just the experience of Being there..

It's like being in love with someone no one ever met or heard of. Well, that's my life in general, so no surprises.

My love is in the forest, and will remain everso.

My heart is broken, when I cannot be there.

I am in a place where the forest is at my toes, but I need a car to get there.

My life not being centered around a car, I am stuck in urban inanity..

and I have to find a solution.

Can't I just walk down the street, into the forest?

Can't I..?

2009-09-30T20:46:00.003-04:00

My travels describe a crazy pair of zig-zags. The one between Austin and Indianapolis was pretty much without angst. I was still in the US, but no longer in Austin.

That was bad enough.

Then I was no longer in the US.. in less than a year and a half, Chuck had his long-sought-after job in Germany, unfortunately under an insane person, and we had something like two weeks to arrange for everything to go across the Atlantic. We took the cat by default, and now she's the 20-yr-old Trans-Atlantic Kitty of Mystery.

Enter a state of galactic freefall.

We were met in Frankfurt by longtime friends who will be friends forever, Andy & Joachim.

One met us and hugged us as we got out of customs and inspections, Andy, you saved my emotional life in Europe. You probably know that, as a longtime emigrant. That, after the fanny-pack incident. Will Americans never cease in their convenient inventions? ;-)

Joachim instigated my intellectual curiosity, simply by living in a building with holes in it.

My whole (tiny) hands fit in the cavities in the foundation of his apartment building.

"What are these?"

"50-cal holes from the Allies on their attack of Frankfurt"

If my hands could have cried in these stone cavities, they would have.

My hands have ever since been alert to historical information..

Then, we proceeded through the Frankische Schweiz, quite reminiscent of Central Texas in its limestone vertical relief.

The first day on post, after these adventures, I wakened to obscenities and prolonged screaming.

Some troopie had melted down, and they sent the Krankenwagen (German ambulance) after him. Prolonged screaming, accusations, and the people bending over the afflicted will never entirely leave my consciousness.

First the MPs came, to tuck him in their Jeep, where the accusations continued, muffled.

Well.. here I am.. I thought..

and I also knew, at that point, that German society was going to be better for me than Army society.

I also knew that my empathy for the plight of the American soldier, my respect and my support, was going to have to be unwavering.

I spent the next six years, dancing along those lines.

2009-09-30T19:58:00.003-04:00

One of the great wonders of my life, is the path bodywork has taken me on.

Something happened, when I first discovered Structural Integration, something about the authenticity, the intensity, and the necessary integrity, caught my mind's eye.

A huge part of my personal experience in Germany was my monthly train trips and weeklong sojourns in Munich for the European Rolfing Association's (ERA) training program.

Very early in my European experience, I got on that train, and went by myself. Chuck was always and ever my "net" but I only ever called on him when I got stoned out of my gourd on chocolate croissants (this is true) and called him from Schwandorf on the "wrong train". The conductor was an angel and guided me to Weiden, where Chuck picked me up like a stray hay bale. Every other trip was mostly pro forma, on time, relaxing and delightful. Chuck would pick me up in Weiden or just at home in Pressath, where he would greet me with his own Tex-Mex dinners to soothe the soul of the hungry, haunted traveller. He "got" that problem, as no one else would.

I started in Agathareid, south of Munich, on a sheep ranch. I am leaning on a pelt from one of the mix-breed sheep from there, it warms my back and brings amusing memories of attempting to haggle with a German. Doesn't work.. he got his Euro, and I have the loveliest fluffy lambskin ever, for exactly what he wanted. He sounded just like my dad, raising the price as I tried to lower it. I laughed out loud and flashed the cash. He got what he wanted, and so did I.

I resisted the group living, until I fell in love with my roommates. One French home nurse, an adorable Sicilian girl who was always in my lap once she realized that I was a martial artist who had no personal boundaries either, and I loved her for her vivacious openness and just because she was so beautiful and affectionate, and a singer. I confess to lifting a shirt the singer left behind, a black stretchy number she left stinking of her sweat until I washed it about five times. Her voice in the room's shower left us all breathless.. no singer can resist the resonance of water.

The food was beyond amazing, even to my uneducated palate. Wild leeks, homegrown mutton & chicken, breads & cheese. It was a kind of "kindergarten" for me, in terms of Bavarian life & custom. One of my goals is to go back and do this "Spectrum of Rolfing" again someday, as a more mature Rolfer. I would love to do it every year. I wonder if the beer & cigarette addicted donkey is still there.

So I fell in love with Rolfing, like a man might fall in love with that singer. I met Tom Meyers, had him autograph my copy of Anatomy Trains, met France Hatt-Arnold, Dorit Schatz (who "got" me from "hello") Sasha B, and Christoph Sommer (who let me know that growing up was optional, which really sold me).. I fell in love with these crazy people, and even more so, I fell in love with the idea of really changing people. I fell in love with the idea of *really* changing.

I took the stinky shirt home, and I washed it, and I thought of her, and I thought of what I had learned. I got my first three Rolfing sessions and my feet stopped hurting. The old calluses peeled off my feet, and were replaced by reconfigured ones. My knees stopped hurting.

I was sold.

So the resistant, hard-headed provincial was sold on so many levels, simply by falling in love.

2009-08-16T19:47:00.002-04:00

My father and I connect over family, history & politics, for the most part.

He was talking to me (in one of our semi-weekly phone conversations) about all the crazy things he did with me as a kid.

He says he was drunk most of the time, but I don't recall any change in his behavior until he really "got into it" and then he was pretty sedentary and sometimes obnoxious.

Mostly, when we were doing things, I wasn't aware of him being in an altered state.

One of the things I remember, is taking the flat-bottom john-boat out on the Colorado river in flood stage. I don't know why this was a good idea.

We shot out of the boat dock into the streaming chop, torn downriver until we could struggle to the other side. Then, with clumsy geometry, and me at 9-10 years old climbing the riverside trees to pull the boat along, we pulled ourselves upstream, to shoot back across, paddling like hell to hit that boat ramp on the way back across the vicious swollen river. I think I had poison ivy welts for weeks.

Keep in mind that rainfall in Texas happens a couple times a year, in 5-10 inch increments. Formerly dry creekbeds kill people every year, much less racing rivers.

I think we went out for Pit BBQ in celebration of having not drowned.

Somehow, I was already inured to this kind of thing. Some of my earliest memories are of being strapped to my dad's back, with a fly from a flyrod whizzing around my head. I remember trying to see the colors.

He told me about another adventure in which he put me on his back, and hiked up a waterfall.

When he looked down, he told me, he almost fainted. I don't remember. I remember getting better at rock-scrambling.

At age 9, he put a pistol in my hand, and taught me to shoot. He was very proud that I 1. didn't kill anyone and 2. hit my targets (I remember refusing to shoot turtles).

I think my lack of fear had some roots in his late 60s model VW Beetle which had no floor in places, all rotted out. I remember the road passing by, under my feet. I knew I could fall out, but I knew I wouldn't.

He also told me the story of teaching me and my friend Terri how to use a recurve bow in our back yard. He said we spent all day out there. I think we wanted to be Jedis. We were 13-14, the age all girls should be learning to use weapons!

Central Texas is also Snake Central, and he told me about a little snake that came up on the bank where we were fishing, and that he picked me up and held me over his head until it slithered past. I remember being outside the boat in another incident with a snake being very interested in the bait I was reeling in, and his lifting my fairly sturdy (nearly 100#) 10-year-old self out of the water and putting me in the boat.

My dad was this great, bald & burly creature with long arms and hands like slabs of butcher-block, smelling of gasoline, mown grass and WD-40.

As I grew, I got to nearly his height, with his length of waist, arm, and hardness of bone & muscle. My hands are still small, and my features more dainty, but I am still the kid who climbed the trees to pull the boat upstream, picked up the pistol with confidence & curiosity, and hopped in and out of boats without thinking about it.

I told him today, he had raised a fearless kid, and the subtext went unsaid.

He raised a fearless woman. Without meaning to, just being a dad, and doing what he did.

Whatever else wasn't perfect, he did that for me.

Since then, I've found myself dealing with fear, and fearful situations, in a way I realize most people are unable to step into.

I think my dad is starting to figure out what he did right.

It certainly wasn't anyone's model of how to raise a "young lady" and to this day, I can't set the table or fold a napkin.

I can, however, plant & raise, or find, something for that table, cook it well & competently, and do it all as ethically & humanely as possible.

Other Dad-taught talents include talking to owls & coyotes, knowing the wingbeats of a duck or dove, and being able to catch fish anywhere there is water.

It simply doesn't occur to me to be fearful, most of the time.

Even when I maybe should be.

2009-08-03T21:37:00.003-04:00

So we finally have a partially black president (others may have been, just not obviously- I still think Taft was black- kind of a white Fat Albert).

We got a black man who can finally complain (due to being a Harvard professor) of racial profiling, and be taken seriously. We got a white cop who teaches racial sensitivity, and fell into the biggest political trap of a generation.

We got a Hispanic woman (Puerto Ricans are incredibly culturally diverse) having to be polite to a lot of idiot racist white men who are accusing HER of being racist.

That was an act of brilliant equanimity on her part, walking over that nuclear (there's only one U, in our post Bush society, thank Webster!) bed of hot coals.

I would have wacked out and put a couple gavels and some copies of the Constitution wrapped around various implements of destruction, in some very interesting places.

Sotomayor exemplified the Klingon ethic, that revenge is a dish best served very, very cold.

Don't get me wrong, I feel for all of them. My own father didn't know he was white, until he was 10 or so.

Class war has walked out into the open, in the health care debate.

What the many need, is single payer.

What the powerful few want, and they pay to get what they want, and our representatives are too weak and whorish to look at statistics instead of the almighty $D, what the powerful few want, they get.

My friend the medical examiner had something very interesting to say about socialized health care:

"I really don't want to have to do another autopsy on a middle-aged guy who died because he couldn't afford his heart/blood pressure/diabetes/cholesterol medication, and chose to feed his family instead".

I really have to steady myself, every time I think of that.

Let me give you a picture of socialism, something I have seen personally. I lived in Germany for six years, under the shelter of my husband's work with the US Army.

Every day, you see old people.

They are on bicycles, walking, chatting, gardening.

White-haired folks are everywhere. They are vital, they are participating, they are active.

They are respected, and kids behave themselves, where old folks are.

Because they know their elders have been through some Serious Shit, and don't tolerate any kind of tomfoolery.

The pyramid of failure in our culture makes a vortex of social failure, from structure to behavior.

We don't support education, or we support it spottily. We don't VALUE education, as a society.

We value Luck.

Unfortunately, Luck is not a reliable investment.

We construct our society on a rickety structure of luck & hope.

Now, we have the opportunity to back it up with the most valuable commodity of all.

Hard Work.

The people who've been working hard all the time, are ready to back this sucker up.. if only..

The people who've been on top, and their elected/hired minions, are terrified they might have to either actually get their hands dirty, or "get a haircut". Meanwhile, they are the ones with the resources to brainwash some squeaky wheels to get the attention of people unskilled in critical thinking. A nice side effect of undermining socialized education.

At this point, we are so far in the hole in terms of social "leverage" that the bottom third of society is uneducated, malnourished, and can't even walk around the mall. They are all so overfed by the stock dividend providers, that they can't, in so many ways, put one foot in front of the other.

Not in terms of health, finances, or education. They've been taught a constantly changing stream of nonsense, controlled by whatever party has power or money in their district.

So at this point, the shovel has to go in deep, to dig a new intellectual, physical and, yes, spiritual foundation. (I am a non-theist, I do better without any imaginary friends)

People have to be able to get educated, to get a job.

They get a better job, to get more educated, to get a still better job.

Along the way, they need to be able to stay healthy, free of partisan interference in their political, personal, social and professional life. I saw far better success of this in Europe, than I see in the US. People interpret freedom here, as the freedom to annoy and endanger others.

Sorry, it's not a frontier any more. Move to Antarctica (look out for penguins).

The more paths are open for people to improve themselves, the more they will do so. The immigrant populations of Europe prove this. Many of the newest, best and brightest in medicine, technology and communications, are children of immigrants.

We are a world of migrants now. We might as well give up the idea of US & Them.

We ARE them. They are us.

Now, can we get on with the evolution?

I'm so ready, I'm so not interested in the Status Quo.

We've had enough rectocranial inversion for the next ten generations.

2009-07-31T20:53:00.002-04:00

Late summer in Maryland has been wet, with rain, wet, and more wet.

The garden, raised bed and all, has been the recipient of all the overflow. That and the low spot between us and the neighbor! It looked like a lake, this afternoon.

Rain! we get a lot of it.

2009-07-19T21:00:00.002-04:00

I'm in a part of the world I only ever read about.

Growing up in central Texas, this part of July was the last time you ever thought about opening the windows. In the last days here, it has barely gotten hot enough to bother with anything more than the house fan and "window management". We open the house at night to let in cool air, and close up during the day to shut out the heat.

The sun has turned the corner of the solstice about a month ago now, and while most things are still in full growth, the sun has gotten old.. I can see the traces of the season beginning to age, as I see the traces in my own face & body. Things become subtly less bright, less defined. Leaves fall yellow here and there, early casualties of the beginning of season's turn.

Plants in the garden are still trying to catch up to the cool spring, while the pokeweed & hickory, and wild grapes, seem right on summer's schedule.

Last week I played hooky one day in the Appalachians, and found black chanterelles. They popped suddenly like black shredded paper in last fall's fallen leaves.

The veloute' I made still sits waiting, for another delicate dish. The earthy sweetness, the fruity musk of the incredible chanterelle infuses it.

I think I have missed raspberries for the season, but perhaps elderberries will give me a chance at wine.

2009-07-08T21:13:00.003-04:00

No man is an island

(nor is anyone else).

It is the basic misunderstanding of the basic American, that this is a free country, and you can do what you want.

If what I want is to have elephants in my living room on the 5th floor and experiment with explosives, am I still free, if it bugs you?

If what I want is to drive as fast as I want, while talking on my cell phone, with a Rottweiler on my lap and assuming you know where I am going so I don't need to use my turn signals.. am I still free, if that bugs you, or kills your kid while I am not paying attention?

If what I want, is to drive something with a loud reverb exhaust, in a residential neighborhood or down a commercial street where people are trying to communicate in public (heaven forfend they do anything but think of me and my tiny wedding tackle) , why shouldn't you put up with it?

If what I want, is to have an untrained, insecure animal outside, who makes noise constantly, why shouldn't you put up with that?

The basic misconception is this: That we are islands.

The basic truth is this: Islands are contained by a shared ocean. The flotsam you let go, shows up on my shores. The flotsam I let go, shows up on yours.

My success in society shows up, when you don't notice me.

Your success in society is denied, if I notice you. Your loud transportation demonstrates your lack of taste, as a person's willingness to share their music or mode of transportation, is always inverse to their taste in it.

Your loud animals demonstrate your lack of self-control.

The need to hold a cell phone to your ear during every moment of your existence demonstrates your lack of self-esteem.

Your need to be in front of everyone demonstrates a drastic failure of the most basic kindergarten rule- don't be a dick.

I really despair of any Americans ever achieving something resembling civilization.

If you have never lived anywhere else, you are not qualified to comment.

The idea that we live in a pioneer society has been reduced to the most basic ideas of farting in public (which is what the loud reverb, animals & music really are) and being hogs in every social sense.

Whatever happened to being good neighbors, to thinking about the welfare of others? Whatever happened to looking out for each other? Sure, it happens in micro, but what about micro.. Real pioneer society is all about looking out for each other, because you never know when your house is going to need some help.

The Right has taken advantage of their architecting lack of education about socialism, to make it a dirty word. In fact, it's working so well for most of our modern counterparts, that they are kicking our behinds on everything from manufacturing to health care.

It's a bright, strong cup of coffee. Take a long drink.

2009-06-22T22:44:00.001-04:00

During my times of trial, I lived on a steady diet of Sara McLachlan (I met her in person, she's wonderful) Me'shell Ndegeocello, Sophie Hawkins (more a Chuck & I thing), Richard Thompson, Patti Griffin, and Dixie Chicks.

You need some John Mayer: Vultures, Belief, Gravity, I'm Gonna Find Another You, Bold as Love)

You need a LOT of Richard Thompson: She Twists the Knife Again, Uninhabited Man, 1954 Vincent (just because it's wonderful)

You need Sarah McLachlan: Train Wreck, Stupid, World on Fire

You need Patti Griffin: When it Don't Come Easy

Nickel Creek: Reasons Why (the whole album is amazing)

And you need to listen to the Dixie Chicks sing Not Ready to Make Nice a couple dozen times.

Listen to Shawn Colvin's Get Out of This House -- as often as needed. Trouble, and I Want it Back are good too. Finish up with Sunny Came Home. She has a song called If I were Brave you might like.. what the heck, get A Few Small Repairs (the album).

Sting's Brand New Day is a great way to open your own new adventures.

KT Tunstall's Heal Over is a great way to have a friend sitting by you, when you need it.

I've felt orphaned more than once, and I've always found my way back home. You have, too.

My home now, is anywhere trees grow and grasses wave. Anywhere I can get something to grow.

I had to change my anchors drastically. I am now anchored to Life.

It's a very different experience, in every level.

I am acutely aware of the transient nature of every pleasure and pain.

I would not have any of that, if I had not gone through what you are going through, right now.

You never forget it.

It informs every single future moment of your life, if you are paying attention.

I think you can.

Chuck has never had the anchors you and I have, to have them ripped up and have to re-establish in a more flexible capacity. He never had the chance.. so the curses & cures run both ways.

Imagine if you never belonged to anyone, anywhere.

Me, I have a belonging and an identity, but it just orients me to my new experiences.

Most people can't even get that far.

It's truly terrible, and it runs to the core.

But if you can let go, if you can "weigh anchor" and "set sail" while still having the Ship of Self under you, the adventures are limitless.

It's a process, like so many. This is just your introduction.

This is Coyote life.

2009-06-22T22:08:00.001-04:00

It starts when you are born, however that happens for you.
I call my mom every year and thank her for going to the trouble. I was a bit of trouble, something about insisting on being face up..

They call babies born face up "star gazers" and I hear that they tend to be relentlessly optimistic. Pushy, even.

At some time after 4pm today, Chuck & I transferred off the Red Line to the Yellow line, coming back from a really fun tour of another part of the Washington Zoo in DC. It takes several trips to get through everything, and public transportation is the best option as parking costs something like $14 an hour. We love the Metro, and we hate driving in DC. The sheer bulk of population creates behavioural pressures of time and space, incompatible with the lack of training the population has received, and the ability of the law enforcement to function. Of course, if people wanted to intrinsically do the right thing and help everyone get along to to go along, that would make a different world, wouldn't it.

So we got off the Red Line at about 4:15, hooked up with the Yellow and got back into Alexandria, where I had to pick up my favorite shoes from my buddy Cosper's office. I had stayed with him during the training.. he's a great friend, and everyone running a seminar needs some support. His son is crazy about Chuck (they can talk military tech & history to a level the rest of us simply cannot comprehend) Cosper & Chuck & I pun and talk shop, and we all have so much fun hanging out.

Chuck & I don't think anything of riding the Metro, we are both used to the German public transport, which is as close to perfect as such things get. I was late to class because of it exactly once in 5 years of use. I had to hop around a little sometimes, but it always worked out.

Two Red Line trains collided at about 5pm today, June 22, and at least six people have died so far.

Tomorrow is my 41st birthday.
It happened once before, that for my birthday, I got another birthday.

It was my 30th, and we had spent the day training with our backyard kenjutsu study group, beating the hell out of each other and then going to the Vietnamese restaurant, icing our bruises with jasmine green tea-flavoured chips & talking about everything.. I'll never stop trying to rebuild those times, somehow. I have it in many ways, times & places, it's just the reliability and frequency I'm working on.

Can't do the beating the hell out part so much any more.. not for my part anyway.
Not that I don't have any hell left, just short on intact ligaments.

It was my 30th birthday, and I was blissed out from great training and driving us back home down 969 like I had every Sunday for the last 4 years.

A car swerved into the wrong/oncoming lane, and I heard my sensei Jim P's voice in my head, GET OFF THE LINE and I did, into the other lane, as the car spewed turf onto the side of my car, and dove into the ditch on the other side. My ex had been napping.. didn't notice anything, and didn't know why I pulled over to check on the other guy, who had run off the road and ended up in the ditch.

Thankfully, the other guy was coming out of the car, scared mostly of having to tell his mom he had driven her car into a ditch. A stray EMT had stopped to check on him, and everything was OK, when it could have been very, very not.. if not for my teacher's voice in my head, and the steadying influence of my training.

Today was luck, just luck. We got off the train less than an hour before it rammed the other one.

When something that big happens, you're just fucked.

Thank you, to fate and circumstance, for waking me up to the fact that every single second is a gift. That my situation is the greatest stroke of luck since the first amphibian got hungry enough to venture out of the water.

Happy my birthday, friends.
If you don't celebrate your birthday, if you don't pull out all the stops and live life to the fullest, you must not love being alive.

I get it.
It's fragile.
It's beautiful, transient, and exciting.
It's not easy, because we are built for challenge.

I'm happy to be here.

2009-06-04T20:16:00.002-04:00

I stole it from Bill Bryson..

The ex-pat's dilemma is that of having spent so much effort, to fit into a strange place (usually after having spent more effort than that, trying to fit into a space defined by others anyway) and then having to come back to the place you didn't fit into, in the first place.

I fit into "old Texas" culture, where mavericks (not power-mad Barbies who mistook their uterus for a clown car) were normal, and normal was not.

This, once I did the work of translation, fit rather seamlessly into the values of Bavaria.

Seeing pictures of a house some dear friends are moving into there, and hearing of other friends moving out of their very nice place in Freiburg, just made my heart ache for the great comfortable blocky architecture of German houses.

Living in Frederick provides glimpses of Old Europe in the great stone churches, cobbles & bricks, elegant & antiquated, a little patina of time on a great American city. There is a Pythian Castle, and gargoyles here and there.

It brings me comfort, but it also makes me homesick for a truly great cappuccino or some of the terribly simple, high quality things we got used to.

I found a little cafe where they put cool, crunchy steamed asparagus in salads & sandwiches, and the older proprietors treat everyone like kids who wandered into the house with their friends. (FSK Kaffe on Record) I can sit in there, chit-chat & read the Post as long as I like.

I have a garden in the ground, an analogy to a life trying to take root in a place.

Chuck says he is putting talcum powder on his "itchy feet" and I am doing my best to hold out against homesickness. I did it before, when we moved overseas. I was pretty bad for about a year.. but if I stay on the ground, I can grow some roots, wherever I am.

Once I get into the swing of the seasons, once I get my garden(s) going, I can be happy just about anywhere we can both be healthy, see a lot of our friends, learn stuff and have some fun.

2009-05-27T22:50:00.002-04:00

http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/People/PeopleAllVictims.aspx

With no apology to Jeff Foxworthy (I hope he loves it)

There are three categories of drivers:

Piggie Drivers, Jerk Drivers, & Psycho Drivers (better off in jail or dead).

Ugly Little Piggies:

You might be Piggie Driver, if you use a cell phone while your vehicle (car, bicycle, skateboard, moped) is in motion. You are also a Psycho.

You might be a Piggie Driver, if you have to get to the stoplight first. You're keeping the brake shops happy, and buying enough gas to drain Alaska, though, so at least you're good for the economy.

You might be a Piggie Driver, if your willingness to share your music is inverse to your taste in it. In other words, if anyone besides you can hear the music on your car stereo. You are also a Jerk.

You might be a Piggie Driver, if you think everyone enjoys the sound of your exhaust as much as you do. (No one does, that's why you're a Piggie- especially if you drive a truck or motorcycle of any kind.)

You are definitely a Piggie Driver if you turn into the turn lane next to the lane you want, then push your way into the lane you want by cutting into the line. Depending on how obnoxious you are about it, this also makes you a Jerk, and a Psycho.

Jerk Drivers:

You might be a Jerk Driver if you think you drive just fine while talking on a handheld cell phone. You are also a Psycho.

You might be a Jerk Driver if you aren't sure what the black numbers on the white signs mean, or can't read them.

You might be a Jerk Driver if your dog is a better driver than you. It must be, it's in your lap. Just let the dog drive, it would be safer.

You might be a Jerk Driver if you have to be in the fastest moving lane. Of course your time is more important than anyone else's. Your life must be, too. Maybe you didn't read the statistics about the driver being most likely to die, in any accident.

You might also be a Jerk Driver, if you think this article isn't about you. It's about all the people driving too slowly who don't get out of your way. Of course, you are also the only person on the planet. Must be lonely up there.

You are a Jerk Driver, if your car stinks. Of anything. Including air freshener.

Psycho Drivers (move into a nice padded room now, and save lives!)

You are a Psycho Driver, if you talk or text on a handheld mobile device while your vehicle is, or will be, in motion. *

"Cell phone distraction causes 2,600 deaths and 330,000 injuries in the United States every year, according to the journal's publisher, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society."

http://www.livescience.com/technology/050201_cell_danger.html

You might be a Psycho Driver, if every stoplight is just a race to get to the next one. (You might be part of the economic stimulus, and you might get your stems pulled by an annoyed co-existant on the roads)

You might be a Psycho Driver, if you think you are perfectly safe, on an interstate, in broad daylight.

http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/People/PeopleAllVictims.aspx

You might be a Psycho Driver, if you don't wear a seat belt and secure your kids safely. On the other hand, you might be saving us all from kids who didn't inherit enough brain cells to figure it out. We could be grateful for that, and sorry about your kids.

You are a Psycho Driver who belongs in jail, permanently, life sentence, if you do not obey state law at pedestrian crossings and stop.

You are a Psycho Driver, if you don't keep an eye out for bicycles & motorcycles, and treat them like you would a car (given they act in accordance with traffic laws- and if they don't, maybe you should get to know each other).

You might be a Psycho Driver, if you think this isn't about you. ("Don't you, don't you".. cue Carly Simon..)

It's a free country, but only so free as we extend courtesy to others to be free, as well (and not die because you were ordering pizza).

"You’ll notice that I try not to use the word “accident” on this blog or podcast. That is because there’s no such thing as an “accident”. The word implies that no one is at fault, that it was truly a random act. Well, if you get swallowed up by a fissure in an earthquake or hit by a meteor, I’ll allow that as legitimate use of the word, but if you are in two-vehicle collision, somebody made the final mistake. "

For more info:

http://www.talkingtraffic.org/index.php/2009/04/13/episode-29-fatality-statistics-bikes-pedestrians-speed-humps/

*handsfree isn't that much better-- I have some 20 years of multiple martial arts 'under my belt' and find talking to someone, even handsfree, too distracting to drive with what I think of as a reasonable margin of safety.

If you think you can do better, try swinging a three foot razor blade for fun.

Meanwhile, I suggest that anyone with an attention span invest in a simple stem puller, and not hesitate to use it, on the deserving.

2009-05-25T21:55:00.004-04:00

Americans don't drive, so much as they careen. I have driven in Germany, France, Holland (Amsterdam) Ireland, Greece, Czech & Austria; I most dread driving in America.

Every third person here, has a cell phone glued to their ear, uninformed and unaware of the fact that they may not be the only person on the road. Handsfree is mandatory in Europe.

"Cell phone distraction causes 2,600 deaths and 330,000 injuries in the United States every year, according to the journal's publisher, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society."

http://www.livescience.com/technology/050201_cell_danger.html

Most of these people are driving very nice cars, and they have nice hair and fingernails and very pretty sunglasses, so I'm not sure why a beautiful cell phone earpiece is not part of their ensemble.

I spent a lot of money on mine, a delicate contraption which makes it look like a Ceylon has taken up residence in my ear, but I still can't keep track of all these careening lunatics if I have it in my ear and am talking to someone, so I try not to try. In addition, a light sneeze will send the black plastic into unreachable black plastic reaches of our Honda, so I just don't dare most of the time. Meanwhile the thing is so contrary, it's out of juice most of the time. I have voicemail. I'll call ya back.

Here in Frederick, cell phone use is usually combined with having the family dog in your lap, a lit cigarette, kids bouncing around, and gleeful nonchalance about the color of traffic lights and lane markings. Never having had to use a turn signal on uninhabited farm roads growing up, they don't bother on inhabited roads, either. Everyone has to take notes on where these people go, and memorize it, so the driver is never bothered by having to tell others what they will do.

I assume it's a kind of Darwinistic system by which the offspring of the careless are scared into being more careful, however, the usual result is slightly more extroverted.

The other kind of driver we get here is something I call a Beltway Bandit-- a term originally used for something else, but perfectly suitable.

Taxation without representation appears to result in suicidal tendencies, a political result I actively support correction of. Usually careening at improbable velocity, into spaces too small for both the bulk & lack of maneuverability of the (usually oversized or overpriced) vehicle, the pilot is generally either reading the Post or watching a DVD, if not also appearing to have an Italian-style conversation with someone on some type of mobile device, these people don't appear to have time to so much as breathe without doing 125 things at once. Unfortunately, in their ambition, they steal the breath of those dodging their idiot path of blithe highway destruction.

I'm not sure what is so important about these cell phone conversations.. I would hate to think that someone's pizza order, or grocery list conversation with the spouse, was the one that killed my kid, my mom, my own spouse, because someone wasn't paying attention.

"The NHTSA estimates that your chance of getting in an accident increases by 300% if you're talking on your cellular phone while driving. In addition their data shows that 25% of all traffic accidents are a result of distracted drivers."

http://www.drivinglaws.org/stats.php

There also seems to be a rule about Escalades, Suburbans, and tricked-out, overly clean pickemup trucks. They speed, zip around like elephants pretending to be mosquitoes, and work hard to burn as much gasoline as possible. Acuras and BMWs are almost as bad-- does anyone remember the difference between an Acura/Lexus/BMW owner and a porcupine?

No wonder they are so unhappy. They can't figure out why they have financial problems. Perhaps, if someone is driving one of these unwieldy heaps, they have already failed certain intelligence tests, and are not likely to pass others.

People with evangelical church stickers on the back of their Suburbans, Siennas, Ridgelines and other giant gas suckers are aggressive careeners. Unfortunately for those of us without guardian angels, "Not Perfect, Just Forgiven" doesn't apply to involuntary manslaughter in a court of law.

There are some compensation issues people attempt to address with large or ostentatious vehicular displays, which tend to show up in infantile behavior and attempts at dominance displays while hiding behind several tons of metal and chrome.

An incompetent, insecure idiot in two tons of metal and chrome, is still guilty of manslaughter, no matter what kind of lawyer they can afford.

A recent conversation on public radio brought up intoxicated driving, cell phone driving, speeding and other public transportation issues. The solution offered, was to make driving illegal.

For most of you, it should be, because I hate going to funerals.

My forensic pathologist friend tells me that they test bodies found near wrecked cars for marijuana as well as alcohol, because the former does a number on proprioception as well.

As to the US Marine who gave us a friendly wave about the huge space we left in front of us for him to travel North on 495 past Quantico, this is for you. I wish everyone on the road cared as much for each other, as you and I do.

2009-05-18T21:15:00.002-04:00

In any problemsolving effort, there comes the frame of reference problem.

I always find myself pushing the envelope, in other people's frames of reference.

I'm not sure why this is, we all grew up on the same planet, more or less.

Maybe getting my idea of stable home & family disrupted at various times in my teens, as my parents waged active warfare on one another in various ways, probably eliminated any remaining expectations I might have had, about reality.

Many other people, have had the same experience, and worse.

So, why am I so outside the box?

I score in the minority on so many scales.. INFJ, Morton foot.. I'm pro gun and pro choice, basically a political orphan.

The last decade of my life, spent as a bodyworker for the most part, spent in transition, spent dancing into chaos..

It's a result of who I am, rather than a goal.

Turns out, I love grabbing the dragon's jaws, and bending reality to my will.

It's a path fraught with disappointment, however, that's what I expect. I don't move quickly, preferring to gather information for literally years, before launching decisive action in a maximally targeted fashion.

I do not accept the status quo. Not without a series of good hard kicks and dedicated sabotage.

I bent a major university to my will, and got previously unrecognized awards for customer service, because I actually knew that the customer.. was the student.. and that, given impetus, they voted. I can control the system just as well as you can, with far less formal education. I even bent the US Army to my will, and made them like it. It took the persistence of a hungry parasite.. hovering, lurking and chewing until I could make my move. From then, it was a system of human connections into the great dumb framework of the beast, and how sharply I could wire into it in terms of reward and punishment. Note: Punishment is harder to achieve, but worth it.

Your frame of reference is just that, a frame.

You may think education is important.

I don't have one. Note that I tried, repeatedly. People of my economic background, don't have a great chance at education. I w

I am an autodidact. The most brilliant people I know, are unpolluted by the American public education system. Pray it never invades Western Europe, India, or China, or we will have a world of stupid on our hands.

You may think children are important .

I don't have any, don't want any, don't like them, and think that one of the major problems of the planet is simple random overpopulation. If you don't have as many people to feed, and you can control your reproduction, until you can control your food supply to support it, you don't have a problem. Educate them, to do better than you have done. Don't buy an SUV to carry them around. You can get six in a Corolla. More than that, is some kind of religious agenda if you are not adopting (see Quiver Full fundy wackos).

You may think politics are important.

It's about who can make the most money, off the population. That determines who is in control. Sometimes it changes, for the better.. sometimes not. It depends on the level of education, and inquiry, on the part of the population, as to how far they can be misled.

If you just feel.. a little more lost.. welcome to the human condition.

My very favorite quote from TS Eliot's Little Gidding:

http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

2009-05-13T21:55:00.002-04:00

My colleagues seem unsure, about my willingness to stay in the USA.

Sure, it's shaky.

It's beyond shaky. If someone offered me a full time job as a Rolfer in Munich, I'd be there before the moon changed phase. Regensburg is a good second choice. We love Regensburg.

I want a city, I want a country, where I don't have to own a car, and if I do have the resources to do so, I can drive the very best, as fast as I want... Porsche baby here I come.

It's not a question my American colleagues can hope to understand, unless they trained in the great clear sunny halls of Nymphenburgerstrasse, got the support of that group, got the respect of that culture, where osteopathy is understood and appreciated, where people can touch people and the body is not a place of shame.

The client standing in the class, with her bare and perfect breasts just a fact of nature, unhemmed and unhampered, is just another human being.

I can't explain to you, the things we have to get past, to get to this level of practice.

I bring it into my office, but unless you get on my table, you cannot understand what it is I have been given.

We just have to get over it all, and get to the work.

If we are not, on every level, about the work, we are failing Dr Rolf.

Anything which stops us, fails her.

Keep this in mind as you look at everything we do, and are not doing.

End transmission.. sometimes I think her tyrannical & grumpy spirit shakes me like a wet cat.